Your Bourbon Red - Blue Slate mixes will be Rusty Slates and Rusty Blacks. The one pictured appears to be a Rusty Slate.
I always feel terrible when they have a nest accident when they get so close to hatching! poor mama! I also set up a broody pen for my hens and poults so they don't get lost in the shuffle of daily turkey life. Poults are so fragile, they need to be restricted to a pen where they can't get lost from their mom. They can get themselves hung up in a corner pretty easily those first few days. A broody pen lets them bond good with their mother, too, so they will stay with her when you are able to let them all out. Sometimes I have hens co parent. Turkey hens can co parent pretty well, I find the yearling hens appreciate pairing up with an older hen especially, as the older ladies will teach the younger ones. If you do that, the ladies can't be clumsy or they will crush the eggs and poults twice as well as one clumsy bird. Non clumsy ladies only for co parenting duty.Unfortunately Petrie has had a tragedyI went to check her to close in her nest so that when the poults hatched I could move them all together easily, and also so I didn't have poults falling off the counter. I found that somehow the entire nest had been knocked down and off the counter and the eggs were all smashed.
She moved herself into a crate that I had tossed some eggs in a long time ago to try to get her to lay there. So now's she's brooding there.
I am wondering what the best course of action is. I could either give her new eggs and let her sit, give her some newly hatched chicken chicks and see if she will take those, or break her of brooding.
Yeppers happens here too.
One more week for my small batch.
