Hatching Turkey eggs

[Amossy Itozya]

Hi I tried with no success to incubate Turkey eggs by using incubator machine everytime I found nothing, but when I leave the eggs with their mother they do hatch without problem, for chicken and quial I get chicks with no problem with the same machine.
please help

 

[kmartinez]

I keep my humidity high 50's for the 1st 24 days and a couple days before day 25 i slowly rise humidity into low 60's,temp at 100, on 25th day and beyond i crank down the heat to 98 -98.5 and humidity up it to mid 70's as close to 80 as i can get but not over 80. Vents fully open all the time.

The turkeys love floating catfish food ground up with turkey starter crumbles. The starter i find here is 24 percent protein i like to have ot as close to 30% protein adding the catfish food gives u 28% protein. My last hatch ate it same day they hatched they could not resist the stuff. I also put wooden balls in the water dish to prevent downing. And brown sugar and acv with the mother just a tad into their water

 

[IceAngel]

Hi I tried with no success to incubate Turkey eggs by using incubator machine everytime I found nothing, but when I leave the eggs with their mother they do hatch without problem, for chicken and quial I get chicks with no problem with the same machine.
please help

O.K. so we know your Bator works for chickens and quail. We also know that your Tom is fertile because your hen has hatched eggs naturally. How old is he? I read in a Department of Agriculture article that Toms lose their fertility by two years old. I am not sure if this meant degreased or poor quality sperm production or if it has something to do with their weight. As they get larger Toms may have difficulty mounting. Most commercial farms use artificial insemination.

Next time you try hatching Turkey eggs make sure they're not older than 7 days. Also you might want to break one open to see if it has been fertilized. If you see a tiny white bullseye then you know it is. Next, start candling at 10 days. There are some very good instructions in BYC about candling. If you see some developing embryos you are half way there. As long as your thermometer and hygrometer are reading true and you follow the temperature and humidity guidelines you should have turkey chicks in 28 days. Perhaps you haven't calibrated your thermometer and hygrometer. Don't assume they are reading true, they must be calibrated the first time you use them. There are also directions on how to do this in BYC.
Finally, if you still don't see any evidence of hatching at day 28, carefully start opening the shells. There are also directions on how to do this . You just might have such huge chicks that they can't pip on their own. Opening the shells will also tell you at what stage the chick stopped developing or died. This will give you some clues as to what might have gone wrong. Hope this was helpful.
Good luck.

 

[pjnbill22]

Hello,
We're incubating midget white turkey eggs now. His is our first time with turkeys, we've hatched 2 broods of various chickens lately, but I'm curious to hear from the seasoned turkey farmers, what's the preferred temperature and humidity setting?
Is there any other info we need to know about hatching turkeys?
My dad raised turkeys and is a great source of info for raising them, but he only dealt with them a 2 day old poults.
All helpful advise is welcome.
Thank you,
PJ (=

 

[feedman77]

Temp are the same for turkeys as for chickens.

Turkeys take 28 days to hatch.

Humidity I dry incubate and then raise to about 70 percent for lock down and hatch.

Good luck

 

[kmartinez]

I use a Brinsea incubator with turner. I keep a humidity gauge inside and basically fill with water and do for them what I do for chickens but keep my humidity a little bit higher because turkey eggs are tougher. Honestly the Brinsea does all the work as long as it has water and my temp is right i dont have to touch it. Last season I did three hatches of turkeys out of all 3 hatches i lost 4 of them. One died the other 3 never broke out of the shell.

IMO make a box and put it in your garage if you try to raise a turkey in a spare room in the house its a mess a big one. My turkey box is made of wood fence slats and 2x4. the box measures 3ft X 6ft using 2x4s as the frame and nailing the fence slats pretty sure its 3 ft tall cant remember how many slats off the top of my head when up the side. It was easy and cheap each dogear slat was 1.22 and for the ends i cut them in half and stacked them up the side. bottom was laying on my garage concrete floor and i used dog pcee pads and after they grew up a bid i would put shavings mixed with a bit of hay.

My chicks use the box to but it easily swallows chicks, that box housed 13 turkeys at a time and they where a nice size when i released them out in the yard

 

[pjnbill22]

Thank you!