Male or Female characteristics in poults

[Faith Hope]

Hi! I have 5 turkey poults that are just over 4 weeks old. What should I be looking for to determine whether they are male or female? Thanks!

 

[purelypoultry]

Hi,
I look for size difference, and for the snood and neck caruncles to start fleshing out and being very mobile. Even at that young age, a males snood will start to be much larger than a females. (snood is that funny little fleshy thing above thier beak)

Good Luck!

 

[Faith Hope]

Thanks for the info. I have 5 naragansett poults. Do you know if there are any feathering differences? Three of mine have some white tail feathers -- I didn't know if that meant anything or not.

 

[fiberdrunk]

I was wondering about this, too. I posted a photo on my blog of my 5-week old Narragansetts, showing the differences in snood sizes. I guessed that the larger one is a male but I wasn't sure.


Female?

Male?

 

[floridamama]

Sooo does that work for ALL breeds of turkeys? I have some Royal palms and 2 older Black Spanish... and now some young royal palms and blue slates fresh out of the bator..
Are they able to be feather sexed like chicks can be at the week old(younger) stage?

 

[kelidei]

Glad I found this thread! I have 5 Royal Palms almost 3 wks old... I noticed 2 seem to be noticeably larger and one of the larger ones I noticed "fans" it tail.... do only boys do that? (In case you didn't guess I am a noob!!!)

 

[Lagerdogger]

I used to think I could sex my turkeys at a very young age. Now I don't think so. Males and females can strut. Last year I was sure I had three bourbon red toms becasue of all the strutting. Two were hens. I haven't noticed a difference in snood sizes before 10 weeks. Caruncles really start to develop after that on males also. Males legs will also get thicker.

The snood in the first picture seems unusually small for either a male or a female.

While some people are certainly better at early ID than me, I would wait until about 10 to 12 weeks before I would claim to be 95% sure.