Found Turkey Eggs

[ZedMeister]

I was out on a walk today, on a rural 2-lane road. For a country road, it's fairly busy, a car every 30 seconds or so. I was walking past an 80-foot or so run of privacy fence, and stumbled over a (domestic) turkey huddled in the 3-foot or so swath of weeds between the edge of the road and the fence. There's a whole lot of extra information here, but the end game is that she growled at me, ran up the fence, then flew over to the stream/woods on the opposite side of the road, leaving two eggs behind. So I stood there for a few minutes, weighing the odds.

1) She will DEFINITELY get smashed.
2) Any chicks that might hatch will DEFINITELY get squished.
3) I have two (still-air) incubators at home. One is set up and set for a steady 99 degrees, because I just hatched out a bunch of button quail (two weeks ago). I have some pheasant eggs coming next week, but I can set up the second incubator.

So, I brought the two eggs home. IF they are fertile (doubtful), and IF they hatch (maybe), they will have a better chance of a good life with my flock of chucks than on the side of a busy country road. Also, I hope that removing the eggs will encourage mom to either go home, or find a safer place to settle down. I'm hoping I made the right choices. In the meantime, though, I'm doing crazy web searches. I've incubated (with varying degrees of success) chickens, multiple varieties of quail, ducks, peafowl and guinea fowl. Never turkeys, though. Any suggestions or information would be greatly appreciated. This should be an interesting experiment.....

I'm going to try to upload a video that I took of her. Thank you, guys, for this amazing resource.

-Zed

 

[ZedMeister]

 

[Huntmaster]

She's a bourbon red heritage turkey. Incubating turkeys is pretty much the same as chicken but they take 28 days to hatch. Is your incubator still air or forced air, does it have a turner?

 

[ZedMeister]

Thank you for the response. My incubators are still air, I turn by hand an odd number (3 or 5, depending on my work schedule) times per day. I can't be sure how far along the eggs are, so I don't know when to lock them in. That's my biggest concern. I'm going to candle them tomorrow, though, so that should give me some additional information. I imagine I'm going to have to keep a pretty close eye on these, if (and that's a HUGE 'if') they even prove fertile.

Today, I drove by the spot where she was hunkered down on the eggs, and I didn't see her or any indication that she was trying to continue on that spot. That really was my intention, to dissuade her from hanging out in a spot two feet from fast moving traffic. I hope I succeeded, because she was a beautiful hen.

The incubator is currently holding 99-100 degrees and 37% humidity. I added just a touch of water today, just to maintain 30-40 percent. Please, let me know if that's off.

Thanks again for the response.

-Zed