TURKEY EGGS IN THE COOP who would have thought?????

[sbluvinit]

Well, this spring we purchased four turkeys, 2 bb bronze and 2 midget whites. Our intentions were to raise for thanksgiving...... now 2 of them are laying, my dh says now we should keep them. Will they continue to lay, how long til I know if one is a tom? None of the eggs are fertile, not yet anyways. It would be great if so.... a bator would be even better. Maybe I am just getting alittle too eggcited

 

[AK-Bird-brain]

First the bad news, your BBB will likely never give you fertile eggs even if you have a male and female together. The BBB's have been bread for size, because of this breeding they are physically not capable of successful mating.
I have never raised the whites so don't know if the same is true of them. If you really want fertile hatching eggs Dirty Jobs did an episode at a turkey farm and shows how to artificially inseminate the hens. After watching the episode I can confidently say I will never feel the need to perform this procedure.
The good news is some folks prefer eating turkey eggs over chicken you could market your eggs to these select folks if you decide to keep them around. I have a BBB who started laying a couple of weeks ago (ran out of room in the freezer so they got a stay of execution). She has been laying an egg a day every day for the last 2 weeks.
As for sexing if one is old enough to lay eggs you should be able to see a size difference in the birds body as well as the length of their snoods.

 

[MissPrissy]

Which ones are male?

If the BB are hens and the whites are toms you can get fertile eggs.

If the BB are toms you won't have fertile eggs. Physically they cannot do the deed. The breast is too big and pushes their bodies too far away from the hen to be able to make the contact needed to fertilize the eggs.

Turkey eggs are also good to eat just like chicken eggs.

 

[sbluvinit]

Both my BB Bronze are hens and one of the white ones ( i think). I may have only one tom and he is white. I haven seen them DO IT, so I I dont have any set plans for these birds, dont have a bator to try to hatch any and my kids dont mind eating the eggs, duck, chicken, turkey, they all look the same when scrambled. For sure I have seen one of the bb bronze lay an egg and one of the white ones. the white one just sort of layed down as I was feeding and when she got up there was an egg. Not sure who the tom is but I will say that if you check them like you check chicken eggs. A few did have the white dot on it..... does this mean they are fertile????