Turkey breeding question

[Bcoz18]

I have a tom (burbon red) and hen (I believe black spanish) she's laying eggs I believe to be fertilized. I took her first 4 eggs and placed them in the incubator and shes still laying in her nest outside she has about 10. She hasn't started to lay on the ones outside yet.
Does anyone know hiw many eggs she's suppose to have in a clutch?
I do know that the numbers are different per turkey. She's been laying eggs for 3 weeks. She gets maybe 1 every other day.

The rate of fertile eggs will go down the longer they sit there right?

My main question is if I have say 4 hens hatch out of this clutch will the tom mate with his off spring or do I need to get other hens? Not sure how this all works! Or if I get 2 males out of these eggs will they mate with the other hens they all will be related!

 

[R2elk]

I have a tom (burbon red) and hen (I believe black spanish) she's laying eggs I believe to be fertilized. I took her first 4 eggs and placed them in the incubator and shes still laying in her nest outside she has about 10. She hasn't started to lay on the ones outside yet.
Does anyone know hiw many eggs she's suppose to have in a clutch?
I do know that the numbers are different per turkey. She's been laying eggs for 3 weeks. She gets maybe 1 every other day.

The rate of fertile eggs will go down the longer they sit there right?

My main question is if I have say 4 hens hatch out of this clutch will the tom mate with his off spring or do I need to get other hens? Not sure how this all works! Or if I get 2 males out of these eggs will they mate with the other hens they all will be related!

Only the hen knows how big of a clutch that she needs to cause her to go broody. Many of my hens will go broody on 8 to 10 eggs. I used to have a hen that wouldn't go broody until she had at least 20 eggs. The later it is in the year, the fewer eggs are needed to get a turkey hen to go broody. I had one hen who would go broody on a single fake egg by late September.

The rate of hatchability can decrease with the longer eggs are stored before incubating. This is usually considered to be 10 days.

This does not apply to eggs in an active nest. I did see a study done on guinea eggs that implied that the daily time spent on the nest improves the hatchability of the fertile eggs. I have taken eggs from an active guinea nest that were 21 to 28 days old and they hatched fine.

Breeding a daughter or son back to its parent is considered line breeding. Line breeding is an often used method in breeding poultry.

Breeding siblings to each other is considered inbreeding. Inbreeding is not a preferred method and is the quickest way to expose undesired hidden recessive traits.

Inbreeding and Linebreeding

 

[austria89]

I have a tom (burbon red) and hen (I believe black spanish) she's laying eggs I believe to be fertilized. I took her first 4 eggs and placed them in the incubator and shes still laying in her nest outside she has about 10. She hasn't started to lay on the ones outside yet.
Does anyone know hiw many eggs she's suppose to have in a clutch?
I do know that the numbers are different per turkey. She's been laying eggs for 3 weeks. She gets maybe 1 every other day.

The rate of fertile eggs will go down the longer they sit there right?

My main question is if I have say 4 hens hatch out of this clutch will the tom mate with his off spring or do I need to get other hens? Not sure how this all works! Or if I get 2 males out of these eggs will they mate with the other hens they all will be related!

Here's a study about fertility:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274662018_Onset_and_Duration_of_Fertility_in_Turkeys

You can see that after a month the fertility drops rapidly.

 

[Bcoz18]

Here's a study about fertility:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274662018_Onset_and_Duration_of_Fertility_in_Turkeys

You can see that after a month the fertility drops rapidly.

View attachment 3038231

Oh yes I see that. This is a hobby for me and don't plan on selling them or anything. I planned on getting a couple more hens and then giving it maybe 3 4 years and maybe bringing more Tom's or more hens from outside the "family" this is brand new to me so wasn't sure how thus whole breeding thing works
Thank you both for the information

 

[austria89]

Here's a chart about the hatchability of stored eggs. You can see that the rate of successful hatch will decrease drastically after 2 weeks of storage.

 

[austria89]

This does not apply to eggs in an active nest.

I could imagine that this might has something todo with this here:

https://www.poultryworld.net/poultry/restoring-the-hatchability-of-stored-eggs/

Short term incubation can improve the hatchability.

 

[R2elk]

I could imagine that this might has something todo with this here:

https://www.poultryworld.net/poultry/restoring-the-hatchability-of-stored-eggs/

Short term incubation can improve the hatchability.

It may. All of the hatchability studies I have seen except for the one about guinea eggs have only dealt with artificial storage and incubation.

We do not replicate what goes on in nature. I had one specific cold spell where the turkey spent time on the nest at night during freezing temperatures but left the nest all day when the temperatures were warmer. When she finally went broody, the eggs hatched when expected.

Research has shown the 27°F will kill kill eggs. Admittedly not everywhere here is the same temperature outside. I have had eggs that were left unattended overnight when the temperature dropped to 20°F that all hatched fine for me.

I had a hen hatch 8 of 12 eggs. She left the nest in the shade with the poults. She stopped on the way to the coop and took time to pick a fight with the dog through the kennel wire. While she was distracted, I took the poults and put them in the brooder. She spent hours searching for her missing poults.

She was off the nest for a minimum of 8 hours when she finally quit searching for her poults. She went back to her nest. Three days later she came off the nest again with 3 more poults.

A neighbor had a hen sitting. His wife chased the hen off of the nest in the evening and put her in the coop. She went to toss the eggs and discovered the poults were alive and nearly ready to hatch when she tossed one. She tried to get the hen to go back to the nest to no avail. The hen returned to the nest the next morning and had a successful hatch the next day.