TRANSGENDER HEN??? questions please help!

[bfran134]

Hello! so my hen turkey started to act like the boys....She started strutting and gobbling this week! Is this rather rare or common to see??? will she still breed with the males that i have? I have never seen this before . very neat to watch lol . Has anyone had this happen before??

 

[jackietheturkeylover]

important question: does she lay eggs? if not i'm sorry to tell you, she's a boy

 

[bfran134]

no she hasnt layed eggs. i hatched them last year her 2 brothers have beards and snoods...she on the other dont have neither.... it's def a hen makes all the noises a hen would make cept she started strutting yesterday and tryin to gobble!

 

[jami0850]

hen turkeys will strut and occasionally try to gobble although its usually not a very good gobble. it is usually a display of dominance. my hens do strut from time to time. it is not the norm, but definately not unheard of. the attached pic is of my narragansett hens strutting. they were in a little disagreement about something and i snapped the pic with my phone. they all lay eggs... as a matter of fact they are running out my ears right now!

 

[flocksalot]

My Broad breasted Whites do that all the time. I tell them they are soooo pretty and they just do it. It think it's cute.

 

[Turkeytruff]

Hi there
I just got chickens and turkeys for the first time 6 weeks ago and am learning a lot. I have 2 Narragansett 10 week old poults and really want to know if one is a female. The other one strutts all the time, in response to 2 13 week Bronze boys I also have. Is there any other defining characteristics you can use at this stage? The one I think is a female usually crouches down when the others strutt but also has displayed (which you say is also possible). Both are starting to develop their wattle so that's not definitive either. thanks very much for any info.

 

[Moochie]

Oh gosh I was wondering the same thing about my young blue slate hen. If I hold one the the chickens near her face she starts puffing up, walking tip-toe/slowly, and will try to peck the chicken. My now deceased pet turkey Gally, which I though was a hen too, would start strutting his stuff, tilt his tail in a fan shape towards one of the chickens, and would chase the chicken around until the chicken would hide or come up on my lap.
My slate hen is also being raised with a wild eastern turkey poult which I think is a tom, he has longer legs than her, is bigger, is losing more feathers on his face/neck faster than the hen and they're both 13 weeks old. He never displays though.

 

[frank53061]

This is my first year to raise Turkeys I have Red Bourbons and it is all trial and error and I will admit to a lot of errors I was sure that I had only 5 Toms out of my 17 but it seems now I have 2 to 3 more Toms than I thought I had they must be late bloomers.
My Turkeys are 5 months old now so trying to sex Turkeys unless you are experienced is a crap shoot even when there at a much more younger age.

I have yet to see any of my Hens get down on the ground when the Toms strut it may be that there still to young.
I believe that there full grown around 8 months I hope by then I have a proper count of Hens and Toms LOL.

Good Luck with the sexing or gender Issues.

 

[flocksalot]

Yup girls will strut, but they won't hold it for long periods. My two pet BBWs will always strut after I have rubbed their back when they squat for me, when I tell them how pretty they are, or when I am carrying one of my Midgets and they are jealous. As for the young one squatting near the other I would bet it's more of a submissive response at that age. They do have a heirachy.

Somewhere around 12 weeks the tommies will start to turn blue in the face when they strut and will hold the blue coloring longer and longer. Some times I look out at our remaining 35, aged 12 weeks to 15 months, and the toms all look like they have clown faces. It's especially cute on the little Midgets. The girls can only get a darker shade of red and then fade back to their normal color. The blue is very bright and once you start seeing it you will know for sure what you have.

Now I've only ever raised Broad Breasted before this year with this years Midgets my first, and even though they take a bit longer to grow out I've seen no difference in being able to sex them. The one big difference is that the Midgets all develop the red head and caruncles making them look all the same with the exception of the snood which thickens and gets longer than the girls do. I'm not experienced in other breeds, but I can tell you that the flaring tail and getting silly around chickens is pretty normal. My Midgets love to chase the chickens, duck, geese, and have chased squirrels, gophers, and wild birds. The only thing those little buggers couldn't get to run from them were the horses which just pushed them out of the way and kept grazing.

Usually I can tell pretty early on but sometimes they like to fool you. Last year I would have sworn from day two that I had 15 toms and 10 hens. When they were about 16 weeks I found different. As I put them away I always count them. I first counted the hens and only came up with 9. We ran all over looking for the missing hen and spent a good two hours looking and becoming more and more upset. Then just as a fluke I went in and counted them. There were 25. One jenny was just a late bloomer and was really a jake. Those turkeys will always surprise you with something, but for me that's what makes them so fun to have around.

 

[Turkeytruff]

thanks for these replies. The narragansetts are growing daily at the moment -the breeder did warn me they would do this by 12 weeks. I will definitely look out for the blue head!
It's funny listening to your chicken vs. turkey tales. When I brought the 2 bronze boys in, there was silence in the henyard for about an hour and a half whilst these apparent monsters, 6 times their size, walked up and down. The hens (bantams) hid under the trees. Then the bantam rooster sneaked up behind one of them who had just bent his head into the feeder. He jumped up into the air and delivered a hefty martial arts kick to the big turkey's butt! Who promptly fell into the feeder and there was bedlam for 5 minutes. It was hilarious and the rooster crowed and strutted away very proud of himself. They seem to have reached a reasonable arrangement now except at night. Little by little the turkeys have wormed their way to the end (with many outraged shrieks and hens falling off the perch) prized position and then everyone else jams themselves in there, including a hen I saw last night with her head under the turkey's butt.