Toms raiding the nest, eating eggs

[frantzypants]

This is our second year with turkeys, and our female went broody in the flower garden's tall grass I'm keen to let her be because she's in a protected area, but our turkeys free range and the past few days I've caught our tom's eating her clutch. It's been about less than a week since she started sitting, so I've replaced the eggs with chicken eggs given the timeline still works out (note we've done this successfully in the past) -- but is this a natural behavior of turkeys? We've never had an issue before where our Toms would eat eggs, unless we prepared them for them -- but those are never actually 'in shell', but scrambled lol.

 

[R2elk]

This is our second year with turkeys, and our female went broody in the flower garden's tall grass I'm keen to let her be because she's in a protected area, but our turkeys free range and the past few days I've caught our tom's eating her clutch. It's been about less than a week since she started sitting, so I've replaced the eggs with chicken eggs given the timeline still works out (note we've done this successfully in the past) -- but is this a natural behavior of turkeys? We've never had an issue before where our Toms would eat eggs, unless we prepared them for them -- but those are never actually 'in shell', but scrambled lol.

Every turkey is it's own individual. This is just one of the reasons that a tom should not be allowed to have access to a hen's nest. Other reasons are breaking eggs when slipping off of the hen's back which probably caused him to start eating the eggs. They can wound or even kill a hen when trying to breed a broody hen. They take the fact that the hen is laying down as an invitation to breed. When the hen resists, only bad things happen.

Early on I had a Bourbon Red tom that would hunt down the nests and intentionally smash every egg to get the hens back into the breeding mode.

The neighbor said he was delicious.

 

[frantzypants]

Every turkey is it's own individual. This is just one of the reasons that a tom should not be allowed to have access to a hen's nest. Other reasons are breaking eggs when slipping off of the hen's back which probably caused him to start eating the eggs. They can wound or even kill a hen when trying to breed a broody hen. They take the fact that the hen is laying down as an invitation to breed. When the hen resists, only bad things happen.

Early on I had a Bourbon Red tom that would hunt down the nests and intentionally smash every egg to get the hens back into the breeding mode.

The neighbor said he was delicious.

Thanks for the reply! I'm fairly certain my Royal Palm is culprit... maybe I'll separate him and see how it goes!