My first Turkey egg!

[smoothmule]

My Black Spanish hen laid her first egg today
All of a sudden, I feel stupid so here goes.
I picked it up and have it in a clean egg carton in the house, I marked the date with a pencil, the small pointy end up. I plan to incubate my eggs or sell hatching eggs later once I have some successful hatches.

How long can they be kept before putting in an incubator? I only have one hen so it will only be an egg a day or so. Can I set them in groups to hatch a few at a time? And how many is a good group to set at one time?

Should I be seeing changes when I candle them within a day or two? sooner? later when in the incubator?

 

[KYBOY]

Store the egg with the big round end up..10 days is a good while to wait before incubating..Much longer and your hatch rate will suffer. I prefer no more than 7 days but Ive still had good hatches with 10-14 day old eggs before and remember 28 days on the turkeys. You can hacth in in pretty small batches if you want though Id prefer to raise at least 4-5 poults at once if possible. Poults like to huddle for warmth and like company too..Good luck

 

[smoothmule]

Thank you, thank you

 

[KYBOY]

Your more than welcome

 

[smoothmule]

Are there any special tricks to hatching turkey eggs? My incubator is one of those styrofoam types that have auto turning with the soft rubber egg holders. I think they will be too small for these eggs. Are there larger one's that will snap in where the smaller one's do?

 

[walkswithdog]

Can't help you with the turner info but you will LOVE having poults. They're really cool and different. I have five right now. These already yell for me and sometimes won't shut up until I hold them all in my shirt or in a blanket in my lap for awhile. They're very contact oriented. The chicks hatched at the same time are only about half as tame despite handling.

Good luck. But don't disturb a laying turkey for each egg or she'll stop laying there and start trying to hide the nest. They're not like chickens, they take offense (believe predators got the eggs), then they get difficult.

Let them accumulate then take them a whole batch at a time. Otherwise many of them get very weird. I know one of mine completely freaked and the other half freaked. I only grab the ones from the complete freak every 10-12 days.

God forbid she move the next nest further into the black berries and poison ivy. So I try not to make it worse.

 

[Marlinchaser]

Quote:
Eggs should fit in the holders, but you will not be able to put egg in each cup, I put 2 skip 1 then 2 again, that way they lean away from each other, and are not too crowded.