Broody turkey hens

[ashlee205]

Hi everyone, so I'm a bit unsure here. I've only had a turkey hatch her own chicks once but she ran away and did it in the woods so I wasn't present for any of it. We just got a tom and 2 hens again and Both hens have been sitting on the eggs together but the eggs should have hatched already from my calculations. I candled the eggs last week when they should have been hatching and they looked great to me I could see movement and everything. Should I continue to wait it out and maybe try candeling them again or would it hurt to transfer them over to an incubator?

 

[R2elk]

Hi everyone, so I'm a bit unsure here. I've only had a turkey hatch her own chicks once but she ran away and did it in the woods so I wasn't present for any of it. We just got a tom and 2 hens again and Both hens have been sitting on the eggs together but the eggs should have hatched already from my calculations. I candled the eggs last week when they should have been hatching and they looked great to me I could see movement and everything. Should I continue to wait it out and maybe try candling them again or would it hurt to transfer them over to an incubator?

Turkey eggs take 28 days to hatch. My experience is that turkey hens are better at incubating eggs than an incubator is. Sometimes a shared nest can work out but all too often a shared nest ends up with trampled poults.

I very strongly recommend that you do not allow the tom access to the nest site.

Good luck.