Turkeys Fighting.

[suzc]

I witnessed a fight today where 2 of my male turkeys had their beaks down each others throats ! Could they actually kill each other by damaging their mouths/throats etc ?

 

[ivan3]

I witnessed a fight today where 2 of my male turkeys had their beaks down each others throats ! Could they actually kill each other by damaging their mouths/throats etc ?

Not saying that it couldn't happen, but ours have had nearly a decade of Spring/Fall sparring (beak & snood `sharing...') with no long term damage

Again, if these guys don't have a lot of open area (no lawn chairs/grills/freshly planted gardens/decks with this&that piled up to be knocked over, etc.) to spar in, then put up some more fencing and separate them. Welded wire works best as, unlike chicken wire, they won't lose all their chest feathers and abrade skin to point of bleeding, while marching back and forth trilling and shoving along shared run fencing.

Place the breeding tom in with hen(s) to be bred and cover shared run fencing with tarp (nonbreeding tom(s) won't interfere with breeding tom's `concentration'. Also, toms that aren't sparring are busy converting more feed to meat - not just expending the calories in combat.

 

[suzc]

Thanks - I have 3 Male and 2 female birds in a fenced area of approximately 240m2 - plenty of room for them to get away from each other - most of the time they seem to get on with each other and each eveing when I get home all 5 of them are lined up side by side on their perch which is an 8foot long 3 inch diameter fence post about 4 foot off the ground. I was hoping they could live together until I have proof that the dominant male is fertile - hoping for eggs soon bad then I will be sure, after that I may need to think about reducing to 1 male for the remainder of the breeding season - interesting times ahead I hope, i would love to breed my own birds this year

 

[CrxyChickLdy]

Hi, I have a hen and a tom - at least pretty darned sure of the sex on the hen, has only exhibited hen characteristics until now. They are both Bronze turkeys - bought & raised together and just over 3 months old. Just started occasionally fighting two days ago. Scarlett will get close to Henry & "say" what must be some pretty nagging wife stuff to him (that's my daughter's explanation), as the more she talks (trills that we've not heard from her before), the more puffed up & ticked off he gets. Then they jump at each other then he slaps her around. I've been able to separate them each time so far but didn't realize that the hens would do this.

Any thoughts on why?

In the first picture Scarlet is on the right and she's on the left in the second picture. Like I said - I'm pretty sure she's a hen as she's never strutted or gobbled - only Henry has and she exhibits breeding postures when he's strutting.