Baby Turkeys here today!

[Spires6]

Connor's turkey poults came this morning. He has a theory that the ones with bigger spur bumps and snood bumps are males. Their vents all looked kind of alike to me. We will mark them and see. The Sp. Sussex chicks we got yesterday that were roos were marked as males and the boys had bigger spur bumps. Time will tell.

Nosy little gobblers. They don't seem afraid of the camera.

The little guy in the last picture doesn't seem able to walk quite right yet. Hope he gains strength with food, water and warmth. I've never culled anything and don't know if I could. I read about the chickie gas chamber method in another post and I would probably have holocaust nightmares if I had to do it.

 

[addicted2chicks]

Those are so cute. I hope you post pics as they grow. I would love turkeys someday.

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

I've got some coming in a month for a late b-day present to myself. Cute little things!

 

[chickensioux]

Congrats! They are beautiful. Mine should ship today. Can't wait, very excited. I love the turkeys!!!

 

[Spires6]

Have fun with your turkeys Chickensioux!

 

[msgenie516]

Hi,

Congratulations on the poults!

I sure hope that little guy in the last picture will be okay.

Someone gave my DH some turkey eggs to hatch last year. We got two adorable poults out of it. They were Black Spanish but they were getting so big at only 3 months old that we had to re-home them. Luckily, we found someone with a large farm that could take them.

I don't think DH thought about how big they would get when he accepted the eggs. He was very excited about it but we are in a residential neighborhood with neighbors very close by and we would have had to fence in our entire back yard to make a reasonably sized run for them.

But they were the sweetest birds! They were extremely tame from the very start and not afraid of anything. But I found them difficult to rear, at the beginning, anyway. They didn't know how to eat or drink and I had the whole family pitching in to feed them by hand whenever they passed the coop. We dipped their beaks in the water and put shiny objects in it to draw them to it. The did LOVE to eat the little tidbits of food from our fingers, though. And, finally, they got the hang of it and ate on their own.

I think if we had been fortunate enough to be able to keep them, they would have followed us everywhere. They seemed to like people A LOT!

I have no idea about sexing them, I still didn't know what ours were at 3 months.

I'm sure you will love them! Good luck!

Genie

 

[speedyjr7]

cute turkeys

 

[MNmommy]

Very adorable!!! I wish we could have turkeys here. Someday I will live in a place where I can get some!!

 

[Spires6]

Thanks for the great post msgenie516. Connor really likes his turkeys. We have a farm but I didn't really want to get 15. I'd rather keep about 6. But minimum order was 15 and they sent 16. Funny thing. Connor is an avid hunter and hunts wild turkeys and has killed a few. I was thinking when we ordered maybe we could eat the extras but he says no way. I suggested Craigslist and he looked at me like I was insane and said "We aren't selling them to just anyone."
He seems to have really bonded with the little gimpy gobbler. The little poult walks with one leg that kind of rotates out. Luckily, he seemed to get stronger over the course of the day and was walking better. Maybe he needs some Forrest Gump -like brace apparatus. Uh oh, I think I just came up with a name for him. That means he probably will live here forever.

 

[chickenwhisperer123]

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