Bronze / BBB breeding

[MarineCorpFarmr]

Has anyone recently bred a bronze tom to a BBB hen? I do have a pair of BBB's (tom is thanksgiving) but the hen has been laying almost daily. We also have a standard bronze tom tho he is still young, a young blue slate tom 3 bronze and a bourbon red hen. I took 6 of the eggs for a friend to set. At 10-14 days, nothing but clear eggs. So far nothing fertile.So out of frustration i've set another 7 eggs this time in my incubator. Has anyone tried to AI a BBB at home with good results?

 

[Celie]

We had a BBW hen old enough to lay eggs and the first dozen or so were fertile, because we did not know they had to be AI, and kept their weight down as much as possible, so the tom would be able to mate. After that the Tom became too big breasted to mount the hen, so we kept her and got some Holland White Turkeys, most of which turned out to be Toms. The Holland Tom successfully mated with the BBW hen, but because of the size of BB turkeys( hens at 55-60# and Toms over 80#)at maturity over 1 year old, We decided to stay with the Holland Whites. We had to quarter the BBW to fit it into our oven, but we did make a lot of ground turkey out of one and some very delicious sausage out of another.

 

[MarineCorpFarmr]

LOL I have no problem grinding up turkey. Pretty sure my bbb tom @ goin on 7 months is much too big to get on her. He's gunna be meeting his end here soon

 

[Celie]

If you can lift him into your lap or have another strong young person help you can try AI. That is how they make the fertile eggs to hatch all the BB turkeys from, but at 4'10" and well over 60, I can not do it, myself. There are several videos on you-tube on how to do it, with chickens. You do Turkeys the same way. They use AI on all of the BB turkeys that are sold in grocery stores.

 

[MarineCorpFarmr]

Im sure they do. Im betting our big tom is bout 55 lbs now. while a chore i can get him flipped over on my own without too much fuss. Ill have to look into it before he meets the freezer for thanksgiving

 

[MarineCorpFarmr]

Celie - I looked into it, really doesn't seem too hard. Sadly i found better video from a dirty jobs episode then anything else. lol