Broody Turkey Question

RAREROO

Crowing
13 Years
Jul 22, 2009
4,518
82
344
Alapaha, Ga
For those of you who have had broody turkeys and allowed them to set, how well did they do and are they bad about breaking their eggs ? It seems like such a large bird would break their eggs sometimes. Anyway, one of my turkey hens has found a duck nest and is now setting in it and I am thinking about letting her set some chicken eggs that are kinda important to me and I dont really want to take the chances of her breaking them as I have never let any of my turkeys brood before. But if you all think they will be OK, I may go for it. And how many chicken eggs do you think a broody turkey could cover safely ?

Thanks in advance.
 
Our broody hen, Thanksgiving, is incredibly dedicated and has never broken an egg. We don't have any fertile eggs but if we did, I would happily stick any of them under her.
 
My broody bourbon red sat and hatched out 5 baby turkesy on Dec 17, 2009 with no issues in the snow and all. And she is sitting again on 16 eggs.
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Mine did fine with chicken eggs. I put them under her 7 days after she started setting on turkey eggs. She hatched chickens and turkeys and was a great mom to all the youngsters. I only have a still air incubator so anytime I have a hen setting I take advantage of it.
Just keep in mind, some hens do a better job than others and you never know until they've set how their going to do. I would not trust high value eggs to a hen I did not know from experience could set them.
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Personaly I never had to much luck with turkeys raising anything but turkeys. But I also hatch most of my eggs myself. Of my turkeys that have hatched out there own eggs they have had pretty big clutches. I have had a few turkeys hatch over 20 babies and coved even more eggs than that. I took the eggs from one hen when I found her nest in my dry pound. Out where she was sitting made her prime eating for coyotes. I hatched them myself. I think there was 23 that hatched.
 

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