New Babies Turkeys Being Introduced to an Adult Couple

[kai1006]

Hello all. This is my first post here but I've found lots of incredibly important info on here. But as the title says I'm wondering about my situation. We just rescued 2 Broad Breasted White turkeys, aged at about only 2 weeks. We have two Beltsville Small White turkeys, a bit over 2 years old (1 hen, 1 tom), and the hen actually hatched and raised a chicken before. So I'm wondering, are there any uncontrollable risks to putting the poults with the adults? The poults where from a local feed/farm supplies store. Thanks in advance!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I generally pen my poults for a few weeks to a few months inside the turkey run during the day, before I can successfully release them. There's always a few hens determined to chase them. Every batch goes differently.

Since you only have a single hen it all depends on her. Tom's generally either ignore poults or they try to look out for them.

I'd start by penning them where the adults can see them through a fence for a week or two before starting supervised mingling.

One year I had a broody turkey hen take to the poults who were around 8 weeks, and she became their mother. So you just never know how it's gonna go.

 

[kai1006]

I generally pen my poults for a few weeks to a few months inside the turkey run during the day, before I can successfully release them. There's always a few hens determined to chase them. Every batch goes differently.

Since you only have a single hen it all depends on her. Tom's generally either ignore poults or they try to look out for them.

I'd start by penning them where the adults can see them through a fence for a week or two before starting supervised mingling.

One year I had a broody turkey hen take to the poults who were around 8 weeks, and she became their mother. So you just never know how it's gonna go.

Thank you for responding! That's good to know about the behavior. Do you think there would be a risk of diseases? That's what we're most concerned about.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Sorry, I miss read your post. Turkeys generally are pretty hardy, and aren't prone to many diseases beyond blackhead, or cocidiosis that I've read or seen, so you should be okay. Hatchery birds tend to come from clean source's, and I'd assume that's where the feed store got them from.