They are my first heritage breed. I raised BBW last year also but they were all holiday birds. I am in New Hampshire and it is still very cold. We just had a week of temps only reaching 10 degrees during the day and negative temps at night. Things will definitely not start getting green around here until April.Where are you? Here in Louisiana, it has already hit 80 degrees and this is January! The days are starting to get longer and everything is starting to green. Sounds like your eggs are right around the corner and should be coming any day now. Are Bourbons your first turkeys? They seem to be a very popular breed.
April? By april, we have tomatoes! I think I am spoiled living in the South.
Your gonna make us New Englanders jealous or maybe even cry
Ok you turkey connoisseurs, let's talk candling. How many of you candle your eggs? When do you candle your eggs? HOW do you candle? What kind of flashlight do you all use to candle? How OFTEN do you candle your eggs once they are put in the incubator?
I have to admit that I DO NOT know how to candle. I have tried it but I can't see anything. Looks like a big glob of something in there. I don't ever see any veins or all of that other stuff people say that they see.So because of that, I don't ever candle. I just leave the eggs in and if they hatch, then they hatch. If not, then oh well. I have been SO lucky to NEVER have had any eggs to explode. WHEW!
Same here ... We ordered 15 and had 8 survive to 3 months when an opossum got 3 more of them. Turkeys are so tricky. Since then I've been told not to give them grass or any veg unless it's chopped fine before they are 8 weeks and to not set them on the ground before then either. We'll see with the babies we have now. Even with them we lost one of our four on day 2 with no idea why.I have Midget whites and I love them. They are small and friendly for the most part. Tom Tom our head turkey likes to attack my 9 yo daughter... not sure what that is about. I just got my first turkey egg today. I brought it in the house because I am not sure what I am going to do with it. I want to hatch them but I am not sure how well the female will do raising them. We have 2 males and 1 female, we lost a female this week to some idiot driving way too fast down our road. I was sick with grief over it. We ordered 15 from McMurray and only 4 survived, and I can bring any chicken, duck or goose back from the brink of death but the turkeys were another story.
I would love to try BR, BS and RP turkeys but right now I am going to try to keep these ones alive and breed them first. Wish me luck, I am going to need it!!!
PS I don't have an incubator yet ... any suggestions for a cheap but good one?
I had 4 poults hatch out this morning, so I weighed them. The eggs are definitely getting bigger. The few poults that I weighed earlier this month were 1.5 to 1.8 ounces. Today they weighed 1.7, 1.8, 1.8 and 1.9 ounces. The eggs I collected today were 2.8 ounces each, so I expect that next month the poults will be even bigger. Even though the ones hatched earlier were slightly smaller, they all were strong and healthy. I can't tell you how their weight gain is, because I have been selling them as soon as they have been hatching. So far about 9 to 10 dozen, I think, with 1 infertile and 2 that died in the shell. I guess that comes to around 97% hatch rate. I have also sold a few dozen eggs, so I do not have any figures on that.I want to remind everyone, if you buy hatching eggs, do not expect the same hatch rate with shipped eggs, only God knows how postal employees handle perishables, not to mention the equipment used to sort them! I will continue to report as many statics as possible and maybe others can let us know how their turkeys are doing as the season goes on. I have the smaller breeds like midget whites lay the largest eggs, maybe someone raising them can let us know?
