Turkey Breeding

[Wilder Family]

Hi and thanks,

We live in Thousand Oaks and were considering the trip... or you could come here and leave him for a while (hour? day? week? month?) How many dates do they have to go on? We are new to this turkey biz, although we've been raising backyard chickens for 8 years. We have a large side yard and a seperate turkey pen next to the coop (though our female turkey hangs with the chickens since we had the Tom for Thanksgiving.)

She's laying eggs and seems ready to "get married". We think she is a standard BB, 38 pounds, 8 months, and probably a Taurus.

 

[onthespot]

You could come get him and leave him there as long as she keeps laying. If you keep taking the eggs she may not go broody for a while. hatch them in an incubator or sell them on craigslist or eggbid, or here on BYC. Don't know if he is man enough for a big gal like that. The only way to know is to try. I'm currently driving my old 78 dodge one ton 440 that gets 7-8 miles to the gallon, so no way on EARTH will I be driving to TO... lol Maybe call him a cab.

 

[ccrawf]

I live in Missouri so I can’t help. But I had my slate start laying eggs in Early December. I think putting a light in the coop affected her sense of day length. From what I know. She laid a total of 12 eggs over a 15 day period. She was about 6-7 months old then.
I collected them in 2 sets of 6 each and put them in the incubator about 10 days apart. One of each group developed, even though I had seen the tom mount her repeatedly. Didn’t raise the humidity at the end of the first batch and the one that did develop died before it hatched. Raised the humidity on the second one and it hatched, but has some kind of defect. See my other posts on here for more details, etc.
The turkey eggs are good to eat until the get fertilized, since you can’t do much else with them. Hope you get the tom in time and all goes well with the ones you incubate. I’ll try again in the spring with her and my Bourbon red hens. See what happens. Best of luck.

 

[Wilder Family]

Onthespot and ccrawf, thanks. It's such a great experience being a part of the BYC forum. Onthespot, your 78 dodge can rest at ease in the knowledge that it doesnt have to drive to Turkey Mecca. On the other hand, you have given us a whole new range of ideas in looking locally for a stud tom. We have no rooster for our chickens (our neighbours would kill us in our sleep if we got one) so we eat unfertilized eggs. None of our chickens have ever expressed a "higher calling" when it comes to procreation, so the telltale signs with our turkey hen have us running around with motivation. At this point I feel i can atleast call the Oxnard feed store with an M.O. darn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.