Moving Turkeys

[LRH97]

Ok, so I have a Royal Palm hen that seems to want to go broody. I've had this particular group ( a Bourbon Red tom, a RP tom, RP hen and a Blue Slate hen) for about two years now. I've always hatched turkey eggs artificially with an incubator. The hen has been in the nest box all day and this is not the first time she's done this. Here's the problem though: for some reason, she has insisted on choosing a nest box in the banty coop, which means the nest box is pretty darn small. Half her body sticks out the front of the nest, and even if I left her there, I'm not sure she could properly incubate the eggs. She's done this at least three times, each time I've attempted to move her, she seems to give up on hatching, leading me to suspect that she may an unreliable mother. But hopefully if I wait a couple of days to move her she'll stick with it. Any other tips/suggestions for moving a wanna-be turkey momma? It's proven to be a little more tricky than with chickens.

 

[ivan3]

They really aren't that particular. We pile straw and wood chips in the back corners of their shed and even if the jennies/hens fixate on laying in the middle of the raspberry patch - we just pick the hissing errants and their eggs up and place the eggs in a hollowed out hole in the straw and keep the girls in their run - they end up in the shed, laying/gone broody, every time (we completely destroy/pile dead branches on "unapproved" nest(s) in case they fly out of run and attempt to reoccupy... ).

Provide a quiet, semi-dark corner (if nothing else) and prevent hen from going anywhere near the banty digs.

 

[LRH97]

They really aren't that particular. We pile straw and wood chips in the back corners of their shed and even if the jennies/hens fixate on laying in the middle of the raspberry patch - we just pick the hissing errants and their eggs up and place the eggs in a hollowed out hole in the straw and keep the girls in their run - they end up in the shed, laying/gone broody, every time (we completely destroy/pile dead branches on "unapproved" nest(s) in case they fly out of run and attempt to reoccupy... ).

Provide a quiet, semi-dark corner (if nothing else) and prevent hen from going anywhere near the banty digs.

Thanks for the response! She's been on since I started the thread, so I'll attempt to move her into a corner in the barn onto a nice mound of straw. (Being careful to dodge her trying to peck the daylights out of my hands!)