Midget White questions

[erinszoo]

Hi, I'm new to turkeys this year and we just got a grab bag of two of them. One died at three weeks with no warning signs. The other one is still going strong but we were wondering how to tell if it is a male or female and at what age the snood should start growing if it's male? He/She's very friendly and even sits in our laps and poses for pictures and wants to follow us around the yard with the geese but we don't let it because we're afraid that we can't catch it to put back in the pen. At 7 weeks it is 2 1/2 lbs and we've never seen it strut. It is beginning to gobble some though.

Also, how long should we feed it starter mash? We've moved the other birds onto grower ration pellets.

 

[sonew123]

yours looks like a male -the darkening of the white on top of its head-kinda light rusty colored means males ( I believe -I had them last year) The size of that snood also screams male to me for its age. Do you have any other photos? Gobbling in males will occur later-mine didnt gobble until it was about 4 months old-they "talk" which is so cute. Id let him follow you around! My turkeys went in every night and I never had to hunt them down to go in. Until they grew big enough to fly on garage roof then I had to use the HOSE to get them off-or climb a ladder to grab them off!