Hen & Tom adopting poults

[TaylorB1216]

Hi All
Quick question here:
So my husband is a special education teacher at a local high school and he teaches a life skills science class. In May, they incubated a few of our turkey eggs. 5 of the 7 hatched early June and we kept two poults and gave the additional 3 to a farmer friend of ours.

The two poults have been raised in a brooder pen for the past 3 weeks, and recently we've been letting them spend time outside during the daytime hours when it's hot. The adult turkeys - which we allow to free range (cooped at night for predator protection) - have taken quite an interest in them.

We recently allowed the adults into the pen while the babies were out there while we stood watch, and much to my surprise, the hens and tom showed no aggression whatsoever, no picking or nasty pecks...nothing. In fact, our Tom stood guard over them (as he does our hens), guiding them away from us when we were in the pen, and standing between us and the babies. Last night, before we went to take the poults out and put them away for the night, we noticed that one of our hens -instead of roosting- had nested on the ground and actually had the two poults tucked in with her.

We let them stay out there for the night, and checked on them this morning - they're just following the adults around and happy as can be.

So my question is: Is this typical for a hen/flock to just adopt poults that are 3 weeks old?
Our hens have been great moms before to some baby pullet chicks, but those were a day old and we snuck them under the hens at night time, during a particularly broody phase.

I didn't expect this whole scenario - our Tom is very protective of his hens, so I was actually worried he'd hurt the poults.

Just wondering if anyone has experienced anything similar!

 

[BreanneRN]

I recently bought 2 little poults, probably 2 weeks old to place with my broody BBBronze turkey, as her eggs turned out to be infertile and she had sat for 30 days, it was getting hot and didn't want her to sit in there anymore... I keep her with another hen and a year old tom, all have accepted the poults and they just run around the coop with the others, bed down with foster mom at night. I keep separate water and food out for them, but other than that, they are doing fine out there with the others without any special care... You might have to worry more if you have any mean girls... And my broody BBBronze is off the nest and out taking care of them, though they don't really seem to mind very well...

 

[R2elk]

Hi All
Quick question here:
So my husband is a special education teacher at a local high school and he teaches a life skills science class. In May, they incubated a few of our turkey eggs. 5 of the 7 hatched early June and we kept two poults and gave the additional 3 to a farmer friend of ours.

The two poults have been raised in a brooder pen for the past 3 weeks, and recently we've been letting them spend time outside during the daytime hours when it's hot. The adult turkeys - which we allow to free range (cooped at night for predator protection) - have taken quite an interest in them.

We recently allowed the adults into the pen while the babies were out there while we stood watch, and much to my surprise, the hens and tom showed no aggression whatsoever, no picking or nasty pecks...nothing. In fact, our Tom stood guard over them (as he does our hens), guiding them away from us when we were in the pen, and standing between us and the babies. Last night, before we went to take the poults out and put them away for the night, we noticed that one of our hens -instead of roosting- had nested on the ground and actually had the two poults tucked in with her.

We let them stay out there for the night, and checked on them this morning - they're just following the adults around and happy as can be.

So my question is: Is this typical for a hen/flock to just adopt poults that are 3 weeks old?
Our hens have been great moms before to some baby pullet chicks, but those were a day old and we snuck them under the hens at night time, during a particularly broody phase.

I didn't expect this whole scenario - our Tom is very protective of his hens, so I was actually worried he'd hurt the poults.

Just wondering if anyone has experienced anything similar!

It is not uncommon for turkey hens to adopt poults that are not theirs. Not all turkeys react the same. Whenever I try to have a hen adopt poults that are at least 2 weeks old, I allow the hen to be in the same pen with the poults and then watch the reactions. In most cases the hen with start talking in a pleading voice but on a rare occasion a hen will either ignore the poults or start pecking at them. In those cases I remove the hen.

This year it took the chosen hen about 3 days before she convinced the 3 week old poults to accept her as their mother. However the next batch of 2 week old poults were adopted into the group within one day of the hen showing interest in them.

 

[memphis]

My two turkey hens adopted a couple of Speckled Sussex chicks last summer. The chicken hens wanted nothing to do with them. They watched over those babies like a couple of professional nannies. Now grown, the Sussex still follow those turkeys around instead of the chicken hens.