Broad Breasted Bronze Breeding.

[Lazy Farmer]

Has anyone bred Broad Breasted Bronze naturally? I read it is not possible.

 

[R2elk]

Has anyone bred Broad Breasted Bronze naturally? I read it is not possible.

There are people that have bred broad breasted turkeys naturally but there are far more failures than successes. To be successful, you should to use yearling birds and replace them annually. The odds of successful natural matings decrease with the size increases and loss of flexibility that come with age. Even if you do manage to get successful matings, it is much better to place the eggs in an incubator than to let the hens hatch and brood their own poults.

The weight of the hens and their inability to move their feet as delicately as a heritage hen can cause broken eggs and very frequently results in crushed poults that get accidentally stepped on.

 

[gholmomma]

I'll add: We had a BBB hen that the state expert said was a Mis-breed, some cross with more heritage than true BBB. So we kept her thru the winter for breeding. She had no feathers across her large chest. I thought that she would freeze. She can't fly. She can't roost well -too top heavy to get up more than 6 inches.
Breeding: NOPE. She could be mounted by a friends heritage bronze and even our midget white tom, but no eggs were hatched. She lays about every other day. But they don't seem to be viable - possibly because she is a misbreed. We and our friends tried incubating, then letting my midget white mommas try and hatch them, and even the friends' red turkeys. Nope.

 

[R2elk]

I'll add: We had a BBB hen that the state expert said was a Mis-breed, some cross with more heritage than true BBB. So we kept her thru the winter for breeding. She had no feathers across her large chest. I thought that she would freeze. She can't fly. She can't roost well -too top heavy to get up more than 6 inches.
Breeding: NOPE. She could be mounted by a friends heritage bronze and even our midget white tom, but no eggs were hatched. She lays about every other day. But they don't seem to be viable - possibly because she is a misbreed. We and our friends tried incubating, then letting my midget white mommas try and hatch them, and even the friends' red turkeys. Nope.

Lack of fertility is most likely due to the inability to physically complete the mating. For a successful mating, the hen has to cooperate by raising her tail and opening her anus at the same time. She must also have the internal opening to the egg canal open and not the opening to the intestines.

There is also the possibility that she is not capable of being fertilized. At least one poster on here has a BBB hen that he was never able to get a fertile egg from.

You don't have to incubate the eggs to check for fertility. You can break the egg and check the yellow for the bulls eye which indicates a fertile egg.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/16008/how-to-tell-a-fertile-vs-infertile-egg-pictures