Broken and scattered eggs

[AudieWarren]

Morning yall. I have ten turkeys on about 3\4 of an acre. 2 toms and 8 hens. 4 of my hens are already broody. 3 of them are happily in one nest. I call it the sister wife nest. Anyway, the sister wives are sitting on about 24 eggs between them. Yesterday, they all got up at the same time so I decided to go check on the nest. There were only ten-ish eggs. One was broken. I found 2 more broken around the pen. A few days ago my husband picked 2 broken eggs outside the nest as well. So that's a total of 5 broken/eaten eggs. I grabbed the broken one out of the nest. The hens came back and sat. Well one of my toms(Bourbon) follows the back and starts strutting for them. My husband said he had to shoo him off from the other nest a while back. My other Tom(Giblet) is a gentleman. Could Bourbon be disturbing the nest to get the hens to stop sitting?? If so, he's going on the menu.

 

[Wezdin]

this might be a myth but I read that toms will destroy nests to get hens to mate again....
Again not sure if it's true.

 

[AudieWarren]

this might be a myth but I read that toms will destroy nests to get hens to mate again....
Again not sure if it's true.

I feel like I heard that, I just needed someone to verify.

 

[sylviethecochin]

I have also heard that toms'll destroy nests, but it wasn't from a reliable source, so I'll tag @R2elk and ask for confirmation. Not good to separate out the tom only to find that it was a raccoon or something instead.

I think your ratio of toms to hens (EDT'd to remove BYC emoji that cropped up after use of colon) is too high; I understand that domestic turkeys are harder on each other than wild turkeys are. (again, never raised them personally, but in this case, I'll trust the relative who used to raise them.)

Third, I'm not sure about turkeys in particular, but with chickens and ducks, it's not generally wise to let them share a community nest. It means that they can't brood as many eggs, and there's a greater risk of some of the eggs getting crushed or chilled.

 

[R2elk]

Morning yall. I have ten turkeys on about 3\4 of an acre. 2 toms and 8 hens. 4 of my hens are already broody. 3 of them are happily in one nest. I call it the sister wife nest. Anyway, the sister wives are sitting on about 24 eggs between them. Yesterday, they all got up at the same time so I decided to go check on the nest. There were only ten-ish eggs. One was broken. I found 2 more broken around the pen. A few days ago my husband picked 2 broken eggs outside the nest as well. So that's a total of 5 broken/eaten eggs. I grabbed the broken one out of the nest. The hens came back and sat. Well one of my toms(Bourbon) follows the back and starts strutting for them. My husband said he had to shoo him off from the other nest a while back. My other Tom(Giblet) is a gentleman. Could Bourbon be disturbing the nest to get the hens to stop sitting?? If so, he's going on the menu.View attachment 1710178 View attachment 1710179 View attachment 1710180 View attachment 1710181 View attachment 1710182

Toms should be kept from having access to the nests. A tom will take the hens sitting on a nest as an invitation to breed. The unwanted breeding attempt can result in broken eggs, an injured hen or at the worst a hen injured so badly that she dies.

One tom is sufficient for 8 hens.

I did have one Bourbon Red tom that would hunt out nests and destroy all the eggs in order to get the hens back into breeding mode. The amount of damage you are showing in your photos looks more like it is coming from unwanted breeding attempts.

You should also discourage communal nests as it usually does not work out well. Too many busy feet in one nest can also result in broken eggs and squashed poults at hatch time.

 

[R2elk]

this might be a myth but I read that toms will destroy nests to get hens to mate again....
Again not sure if it's true.

That can happen but is not always necessarily so. Some toms have even been known to try to brood the eggs.

 

[R2elk]

Not good to separate out the tom only to find that it was a raccoon or something instead.

I think your ratio of toms to hens (EDT'd to remove BYC emoji that cropped up after use of colon) is too high; I understand that domestic turkeys are harder on each other than wild turkeys are. (again, never raised them personally, but in this case, I'll trust the relative who used to raise them.)

Toms should never have access to the hen's nest. This can be accomplished by penning the tom separately or by building an enclosure around the nest site with an opening that is big enough so the hen can pass through but small enough that the tom cannot pass through.

Wild turkeys are just as hard on hens as domestic heritage turkeys. The difference is that the wild hens hide their nests very well. Hiding the nest is as much protection from the toms as it is from predators. Domestic toms for the most part are given too easy of access to their hens often leading to over breeding and injuries when too many toms are kept with too few hens.

 

[AudieWarren]

@R2elk thanks!!!