Savagery!!!!

[Rcornerranch]

Well…Truthfully I wouldn’t mind if they don’t hatch! We already have like 25 turkey poults we need to sell here. It would be very cute, though! I love watching Pearl with hers. I don’t have any pics right now of her out with it, but here’s a cute one. This little guy’s been catching flies since two days old!

 

[MamaLynn23]

Well…Truthfully I wouldn’t mind if they don’t hatch! We already have like 25 turkey poults we need to sell here. It would be very cute, though! I love watching Pearl with hers. I don’t have any pics right now of her out with it, but here’s a cute one. This little guy’s been catching flies since two days old!View attachment 2753292

Her baby looks just like the two one of my other hens hatched recently! But she is supposed to be a Spanish Black and the father was a Narragansett.

 

[MamaLynn23]

I’m surprised no one else told you this! I’ve only had turkeys for a year. Both my hens carry broken eggs off somewhere and leave them or eat them. They don’t want rotting egg in their nest either. If an egg rots and explodes, they will eat what they can and carry off soiled hay/feathers/bedding to try to clean up the nest. Pearl disposed of broken or dud eggs and still hatched a few poults. If your hen is a first time momma, I’d give her some leeway to learn. Sadie broke almost all her eggs because she is very clumsy with her feet. But in her case, I don’t think she was breaking them on purpose…just bad at hatching eggs. She’s started a new nest now. She was attacked her 2nd night sitting on the eggs in a field next to my house. We lost 10 of the 13 eggs, and she is bruised with missing feathers. So, we moved her into a coop. Now she has 8 eggs and hasn’t broken a single one yet.

I’m so glad your girl survived that attack. This one I was talking about has also been attacked. But that was when she was a pullet before we bought her. She has only a stump of a wing on one side. But she has not shown any signs of wanting to set though.

 

[Rcornerranch]

Her baby looks just like the two one of my other hens hatched recently! But she is supposed to be a Spanish Black and the father was a Narragansett.

She is royal palm and dad is Spanish black.

My birds don’t sit on the eggs until they decide they have “enough,” and then start to lay on them most of the time until they hatch. It makes sense if you think about them wanting all the eggs to hatch at the same time. Sadie is very on and off her nest while nesting. She waited to get broody until she has like 40 eggs under her. Then it was 13. Pearl seems was 20 and then 7. Sadie only hatched 1 live baby from her 40.

 

[Rcornerranch]

The Spanish black coloring seems to be VERY dominant. Only a few birds have some white feathers here and there and whiter legs.

 

[R2elk]

The Spanish black coloring seems to be VERY dominant. Only a few birds have some white feathers here and there and whiter legs.

The black color gene is a dominant gene and only needs one black gene for it to be expressed. It can hide other color genes but in the case of a single black gene and a bronze gene it will be barred black instead of just black.

I know people for some reason like to refer to their black turkeys as Spanish Blacks but the APA only recognizes Black turkeys. Originally a particular group of Black turkeys were referred to as Spanish Blacks because they were raised in Spain. There is no difference in them from the black turkeys that were raised in Norfolk and were known as Norfolk Blacks.

 

[Huntmaster]

She is royal palm and dad is Spanish black.

My birds don’t sit on the eggs until they decide they have “enough,” and then start to lay on them most of the time until they hatch. It makes sense if you think about them wanting all the eggs to hatch at the same time. Sadie is very on and off her nest while nesting. She waited to get broody until she has like 40 eggs under her. Then it was 13. Pearl seems was 20 and then 7. Sadie only hatched 1 live baby from her 40.

When a hen try's to sit on that many eggs the results are usually not very good. Because they cant cover that many properly and eggs on outside get cold and quit. Then they rotate eggs and others get moved to outside and they quit. After this goes on for 28 days not many make it to hatch. Its better to let her get broody and start sitting and only let them have 10 to 14 eggs to hatch all starting at same time and hatch together.

 

[Rcornerranch]

I didn’t know that! The hatchery we bought turkeys from this year had Spanish Black turkeys for sale that looked like my two. That’s why I called them Spanish black. I saw sometimes people call their black blue slates black turkeys. I assume that is incorrect and they are black slates?

 

[R2elk]

I didn’t know that! The hatchery we bought turkeys from this year had Spanish Black turkeys for sale that looked like my two. That’s why I called them Spanish black. I saw sometimes people call their black blue slates black turkeys. I assume that is incorrect and they are black slates?

I know that Cackle at least claims they are selling Black Spanish turkeys but then they also claim they are breeds when there is only the breed Turkey and they are broken down into Varieties. If they can't be trusted to get the breed information right there are other things that they cannot be trusted about.

Black turkeys that are the product of mating Blue Slates together are Black turkeys. Some places try to pass them off as Spanish Blacks. They are just a Black turkey because they do not have a Slate gene. I do suspect that many of the Blacks produced by Blue Slates have something else going on because all of mine would develop a band of bluish gray feathers near the base of their tails while all of their other plumage is black.

There is no such thing as a Black Slate even though I have used the term myself to refer to blacks produced by Blue Slates.