What are merriam's worth?

[Bettacreek]

A local lady wants some of my barred rock eggs that should be hatching soon. She and I talked for awhile, and she ended up offering me merriam eggs. She has four hens and two toms and told me that she'd give me all that I want, since she can't get the hens to set or even lay in a regular area, and she doesn't have an incubator. I'm not sure if she actually wants more, but she'll obviously get first pick once they start hatching. I don't really have room for breeding turkeys, so I'd be selling anything that hatches that she doesn't keep. She said that I should have no problem selling them, when she had the poults, she had too many people and not enough excess poults. Anyways, I couldn't find much of anything on them. There are no eggs on eggbid, ovabid or ebay that I've found. Anyone have any idea what they're worth?

 

[fire1ok]

Where are you located? I would sure like to try and buy some from you. I live here in south east Oklahoma and I just returned from hunting the merriams and fell in love with them. Very very beautiful birds. I bought 4 eggs on ebay yesterday for 15.50

 

[Bettacreek]

I'm in Pennsylvania. I bought two BB whites for meat this year and have fallen in love with turkeys. I won't raise the merriam though, since this lady already has them. I haven't decided on a breed to actually raise and breed yet. I was thinking royal palms or one of the smaller white breeds.

 

[purelypoultry]

There are a lot of crap Merriams out there for sale on Ebay. We carry the merriams and would sell all that we can get our hands on for $25.99 per poult. If you have the real thing I would take orders for them and you can ship them out to my customers. It could be hatching eggs or poults either way. Any good pure merriams need to be bred as they are very hard to find.

 

[Bettacreek]

Quote:
Honestly, I don't know enough about them to know if they're good or not. I've actually yet to even go up and check out her breeders. Even when I do, I don't know anything about turkeys anyways, lol. What should I look for in a good, pure flock?

 

[purelypoultry]

The below is a quote from my turkey breeder.

"to make life easy go to the National Wild Turkey Federations website.

It has a page on all 5 subspecies.
Basically
all are identical as poults, absolutely no way to tell the difference then.
As adults
Easterns
coppery red green body shine, brown to very dark tan primary and secondary tail tips and lower back feathers.
Idealy, no color contrast in main tail color and tip color. Wing bars are 50% black white

Osceolas, same as eastern. Main differences there are longer legs, short tail fans, and their primary fight feathers are 80% black with thin white bars

Rio grandes, same as easterns except with buff tail tips and lower back feathers, secondary tail feathers are burn orange in color instead of brown like easterns

Merriams, white to pale buff tips, more blue/purple body shine.

Very very few people have true merriams and osceolas, most are mix breeds or even worse domestics.
If they don't meet those basic criteria, tell them not to buy as they will be getting ripped off, all on ebay this year on both breeds are fakes, havent seen a pure one yet."