Out of curiousity......a Few ?????s

[WhiteCollarWeezy]

Will a turkey hen leave her nest while sitting? Ive heard they will almost starAve and dehydrate themselves staying on the nest til their eggs hatch? Is this true? Will they leave the nest if extremely disturbed? Of will they die defending their eggs? And how long can a hen be off her nest until the eggs go "bad"?

 

[R2elk]

Will a turkey hen leave her nest while sitting? Ive heard they will almost starve and dehydrate themselves staying on the nest til their eggs hatch? Is this true? Will they leave the nest if extremely disturbed? Of will they die defending their eggs? And how long can a hen be off her nest until the eggs go "bad"?

Turkey hens are individuals. As such each will behave slightly different while broody.

I just had a hen complete her hatch last week. At no time did I ever see her off the nest. The proof that she was getting off the nest is that she is alive. There was also her daily deposits that were well away from the nests.

Turkeys like all animals cannot live without water. They must get off the nest for food and water and defecation.

Just because people don't see their hen get off the nest doesn't mean that the hen is not getting off the nest.

As for dealing with predators, I have had hens abandon their nests to the predator and I have had hens killed on their nests by predators. It all depends on the individual situation.

 

[R2elk]

how long can a hen be off her nest until the eggs go "bad"?

This again depends on the situation, conditions and the time during the incubation or hatching stage.

I had a hen come off of her nest with 8 poults out of 11 eggs. She stopped and picked a fight with the dog (through the fence).

While she was fighting with the dog I gathered her poults and put them in the brooder.

She hunted for her poults for at least 6 hours before giving up and then returned to her nest.

Two days later she came off her nest again with 2 more poults leaving just one unhatched egg of the original eleven eggs.

A neighbor's wife chased a broody hen off her nest in the evening and penned her up for the night. She gatheted the eggs believing them to be bad. When she broke an egg and found a live poult in it, she returned the eggs to the nest.

The next morning the hen returned to the nest. The poults hatched that day.