Mmm, Turkey Eggs!

[SkyWarrior]

I discovered, much to my surprise that Thanksgiving Tom is Thanksgiving Hen. She's fallen in love with me

and waits for me to show up and croons and does the mating squat. (This is so wrong!

) Anyway, she's been laying eggs for me. Today I had a turkey egg.

Oh my goodness! Those are good!

They're better than chicken eggs!

Now, I have to wonder if I'm really going to make her my Thanksgiving dinner. She's a BB white with a lot of personality, but I've heard they don't last long because of their breeding. She's also gimpy after the geese beat her up.

She is now in a different pen.

Is it true BB whites really don't live longer than a year or so before they break down?

 

[OmaBird]

I had a BBW for 3 years. She dies from a attack protecting her babies. I have a BBB tom that is 5 years old. Its rare but some do live a normal life if they get through the first year without gaining to much weight.

 

[Denninmi]

Well, I'm glad to hear that you found the eggs so tasty. I look forward to being able to try them next year.

At what age does a turkey hen begin to lay? Since they're larger birds, I was assuming that they would take longer to mature than a smaller bird like a chicken, and was therefore thinking they would probably begin to lay at about 8 or 9 months.

But, you know what they say about assuming.

 

[SkyWarrior]

Quote:
Yeah, I thought she was a tom turkey until she started laying!

I bought her as a chick on April 8th of this year and she started laying at the beginning of the month, so I'm thinking right around 6 months. Because I thought she was a tom, I didn't bother with oyster shell and she laid really soft eggs that I didn't catch until about the second one in. Since I wasn't sure if it was her or the ducks (I have two girls who had laid earlier in the year), I put some oyster shell out. Imagine my surprise when I saw that first hard-shelled turkey egg! No mistaking that!

So far, she's put out about 10 eggs total between the hard and soft shells. About 6 hard ones and 4 soft shells, but the oyster shell really made a difference.