Can you imprint a turkey?

[keldadog]

As I've posted before, I'm currently 3 weeks into an interesting experiment for a friend of mine. I agreed to raise some ducks for her in return for keeping 3-5 of them. After I agreed to the venture, she added in some BR turkeys...they, of course, arrived with 10 packing peanuts. I now have 24 ducklings, 10 chicks, and 9 poults and they're all almost 4 weeks old. The poults have been super affectionate from day one and will fly over and perch on me when I'm in the pen. The chicks run like the wind when I'm in there and the ducks will approach only if I have treats. Today I had the whole motley crew out of the run into a big pen play in the grass and let the ducks swim. Our neighbors were AMAZED that the turkeys would fly up and perch on the side of the pen in front of me to visit. Sigh....I can't keep a turkey...not enough room....but they're really really sweet.

 

[Mary Of Exeter]

Newly hatched turkeys are SO adorable!

 

[briana1975]

I just got my 2 Bourbon Reds today and they look just like that. I have two 4 - 5 week olds in the big brooder too. They are the cutest things aren't they.

 

[paulinaydern]

Imprinting turkeys...so hair roosting is probably not a good thing. I told my DH that we need to buy them their own wig before they get any bigger and still expect some mommy hair loving.

P.

 

[Elfnq]

you can imprint ANY type of bird. I actually met a turkey once, who was quite fond of people.
but a litttttttttttttttttlleee toooo fond if you know what i mean.
It was kindof gross but he was still pretty cool.

Actually, Aus brush turkeys don’t imprint. Mainly because their parents abandon them pretty much as soon as born (and they have to spend 48 hours digging their way out of a mound, rather than a nest, that Dad turned over regularly for the months til hatching). They have a lot more hardwiring, apparently, though, and respond to visual cues supplied by contemporaries, more than verbal cues.