Breeding in the fall?

[Bettacreek]

The spring hatch turkeys here have started breeding. According to ducks and chickens, when they start to breed, you can expect eggs shortly after (about a month or so), but from what I'm reading, spring turkeys rarely ever lay in the fall. I'm not, however, finding if they lay after breeding, or if they are "wasting" their energy on breeding this fall.

 

[faykokoWV]

mine were the opposite, they started laying eggs in Feb but the Tom didn't do his job until April. For the longest time, I thought maybe he wasn't interested in girls. I do think that most breeds of turkey don't lay in the winter. I don't think laying eggs is associated with breeding in their little brains though.

 

[Bettacreek]

I guess it'll be a wait and see. I was told that the ducks who started breeding two months ago wouldn't mean eggs, but sure enough, they started laying a month later. Even if I have to wait til spring, I'm still happy. We didn't think we had any hens, and had actually driven four hours away to spend $60 on some hens. One we ended up selling, two ran away and were awful birds who would beat you up anytime you got near them before they ran away, and one, the only nice one out of the group, I ran over. So, I thought I'd be waiting til spring to buy more poults to raise up for breeding in 2014, but, thankfully, I can hatch out my own eggs and save quite a bit of money.

 

[faykokoWV]

it sure takes a long time to determine sex on turkeys, I have a few I'm still not sure of. I'm hoping I have a good mix lol

 

[Bettacreek]

Our dominant tom was certainly an early bloomer. He was gobbling WAAAYYY early. If I remember correctly, he was only 8 weeks old when he started gobbling. So, he was an obvious one. We had no idea that we had any hens until the one started acting "sick". Since these are our first turkeys, we really didn't know what to expect. I was expecting them to put their wings out like the chickens do, as "handles" for the males to stand on. When it was just droopy wings, we thought she was getting sick. Then, we caught them "connecting" the next day, after she was acting "sick" when I started petting her. Hoover (dominant tom) came up and just started humping her, lol. Usually, if I sit down or crouch, he'll strut and dance for me, trying to impress me, so I didn't think anything of it when he came up doing his sexy dance, lol.

They certainly are a harder to sex critter! I've thought about trying to vent sex them, but there's just no way I can flip a bird that's 20+lbs and prod around without getting injured or hurting the bird I'm violating. The beards don't help any either. BOTH of my white birds (which I now believe to be hens) have beards.