My 7 month turkeys

[vixxy38]

Hi guys. This is the first time I have used this forum...so 'hello'. I found it last year when we started to keep poultry. Thank you so much for all the infomation and excellent advice you all have given me...sexing my peacocks...help with blackhead (cayenne pepper)...worming peacocks...the list goes on (260 animals ranging from chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, peacocks, doves, pigs, cats, parrot, and a pheasant). Anyway as for way I'm posting this message. I'm bit baffled about my 3 turkeys...sexing them. Well I know we have 2 Toms...but can a hen act exactly like a Tom? Displaying, fighting,? She has no beard and I really think she is a girl. She displays all the time and intimidates the males...especially 1 of them. Can it be a hen acting like a tom? Many thanks for any help. Vix x

 

[CochinBrahmaLover]

we had 3 turkeys like that, didnt look like a tom but every now and them i would catch them dysplaying, and if you got in their face they would display, they would never fight with each other tho

i dunno how to help you XD

 

[ramirezframing]

my lone hen (lost the tom) struts like a male now and will try to fight with one of my polish roos. She has laid eggs, so I know shes a hen. Mine will squat down in front of me when I pet her, does yours? Does this one gobble (DH showed me that if you hit something metal and make a loud noise our tom would gobble) or to be sure you can put a picture up and we should be able to tell you the sex of it.

 

[Frosty]

First, I want to say

What kind of turkeys do you have? Some varieties like Bourbon Red and Bronze can be feather sexed. In those cases the hens have light colored tips on the breast feathers where the males have black tips (you have to go by adult plumage, juvenile feathers will have light tips with both sexes).

Yes, some hens will display and some could have a more aggressive temperament than others. You can't go by if there is a beard or not, I have some toms that don't have a beard (possibly rubbed off on the pen wire?) yet I have also had hens that do have a small beard (that also happens in about 10% of the wild population from what I have read and has no effect on fertility).

If while displaying the snood extends (thats the worm looking thing that hangs from above the beak), it's a tom. The caruncles (the bumpy things on the neck) are larger on a tom, and a hen will have feathers going higher up the neck with a line going up the back of the neck up to the head where a tom will be bald up there.

A hen won't gobble though I have heard of some that will try.