Any tips on telling sex of Black Spanish poults?

[GardienneWings]

Anyone have any tips on telling sex of Black Spanish poults? I have gotten pretty good at telling gender on the Bourbon reds, Royals & Bronzes but thie is my first batch of BS. I want to be sure I keep at least a trio

Val

 

[Harp Turkey Ranch]

when they gobble they are toms and when they lay egg they are hens

On the Bs's only thing you can do is wait. There is no specail coloring or nothing it is a wait game to see who is a tom and who is a hen.

Good Luck

 

[GardienneWings]

I kinda figured the gobble & egg part

I guess I'll have to keep all seven until I see who gobbles and who doesn't!

I see you have Narragansetts too....some of my Nari poults (4-5 weeks old) are getting barred wing feathers and others aren't. I noticed the toms do have bars and the hens don't so is this an early way to tell gender on the poults? Or at least make a good guess?

I don't have a lot of space so I am trying to only have 2 toms and about 4 or 5 hens of each type

Thanks for the help!

Val

 

[Harp Turkey Ranch]

I see you have Narragansetts too....some of my Nari poults (4-5 weeks old) are getting barred wing feathers and others aren't. I noticed the toms do have bars and the hens don't so is this an early way to tell gender on the poults? Or at least make a good guess?

No they all should have barring on their flight feathers. They are another one that is like the BS their is no real way to tell untill you got toms and hens.

You want to keep as many as the young as you can so that way you can select the best of the best from them to get your breeding flocks from. Otherwise you will not know if the toms you got rid of were better then what you got same goes with the hens. That is why we raise so many turkeys every year so we can select the best from what we have then the culls go to market​

 

[GardienneWings]

I know, but we have issues when we finally move them onto the ground with losing lots of poults. So I try to keep them on wire or concrete until late Fall and by then we are way out of space. I guess I need to suck up the cost and do a big wire bottom grow out pen. I love to have my turkeys free range but we have way too many predators here, plus I can't let them onto our soil until they are about 1/2 to 3/4 grown or I have major losses. (Have paid for soil testing, necopsies, tried preventative feeds, no answers). If I can keep a few up until they are almost grown they do fine, otherwise not so much.

So I keep a few, and then if they aren't the quality I want I sell them in the spring.

Val

 

[Harp Turkey Ranch]

I know, but we have issues when we finally move them onto the ground with losing lots of poults. So I try to keep them on wire or concrete until late Fall and by then we are way out of space. I guess I need to suck up the cost and do a big wire bottom grow out pen. I love to have my turkeys free range but we have way too many predators here, plus I can't let them onto our soil until they are about 1/2 to 3/4 grown or I have major losses. (Have paid for soil testing, necopsies, tried preventative feeds, no answers). If I can keep a few up until they are almost grown they do fine, otherwise not so much.

So I keep a few, and then if they aren't the quality I want I sell them in the spring.

Val

Wow that really sucks. I wonder why you have such problems back there ??

You know what I think is happening is that you have them on the wire floors the entire time and they never build immunity to anything, so their immune system never starts to work until they get older ?? That is why for the first two weeks of the poults lives we keep them in a floored brooder so they can build a slight immunity and then we move them on to wire floors, but let ours out 8-10 weeks old depending on weather.

We sell all of our cull birds either Thanksgiving,X-mas,Easter or freeze them and sell them through out the next year. if they were late hatches or late culls.​

 

[pdpatch]

Since we live in a Wild life habitate, we also have a lot of preditors. We make sure all poultry is in some sort of coop at night. During the day most will free range around the house. Another reason we don't completly free range is Nebraska does not look to kindly on those who have domastic poultry get into the wild life population.

The turkey's are in a fly way and coop set up during most of the day and get let out for supervise free ranging for a couple of hours during the day.

A little observed item is that in some places the vegitation may be a problem. In North America there is a number of plant species that can be toxic to poultry. We finally got hold of a book "Weeds of the Great plains" to get ride of the ones that are bad. We are still working on the weed problem, but we lost one layer this year, and have another sick now.

We keep track of the Turkeys and they don't get to wander into the problem areas.

Tom

 

[pdpatch]

We are noticeing a size difference in our Spanish Blacks, (our first year with them). Our Poults are about 6 weeks old now. By the time, it time to butcher we will see a noticable difference.

The snoods will get much long in the males.

The carnuckles will be more pronouced in the males.

Females will have a mow hawk patch of hair on the tops of there heads.

Males will gobble at strange noises.

Males will be larger then females.

Usually about 9 to 10 weeks of age some or all of these chareteristics will be visable. By the time they are around 25 weeks it is obvious who's male and who's female.

Tom

 

[GardienneWings]

Those are the things I look for in my others as well. Just trying to find an "early" trait I can use

Also, my hen poults seem to be quicker to talk back to me when I make "turkey hen noises" at them. My husband thnks I'm nuts when I walk around "purrrr peet" ing at the turkeys

Turkeys have SO MUCH more personality than chickens do!

Val