When can I tell if my turkey is a Tom or Hen???

[wildriverswolf90]

this little Bourbon red is about 2 Months old, are there any signs that I can look for to tell me weather its gonna be a boy or girl??

 

[Big Dan]

The red in front to me looks like a hen. My toms colored tail feathers are all coming in at 5 weeks. Does it strut at all. My boys strut all the time especially at feed time.I am no turkey expert but I would say you got a hen.

 

[wildriverswolf90]

It doesn't strut and it doesn't have much of a tail yet... I sure hope its a hen

 

[A.T. Hagan]

At three months you can begin to get an idea. By four months you can be certain. At two months it is easy to be fooled.

Look for feather loss on the neck and head. Toms lose theirs faster than hens. Also size/growth of snood and wattles. Toms will also have heavier feet and legs.

 

[amattsarea]

Has anyone had a eastern wild hen grow a beard or did I get shafted and buy a Jake and tom

 

[Sunny Side Up]

The last time I hatched 2 poults they kept us guessing until they were almost adults. It seemed they had similar builds & snoods, and the feathering on the back of their necks seemed similar for a long time.

Now the poult that grew up to be a hen is a Mama herself with 11 poults of her own. I have been studying their appearance & behavior trying to see if I can determine sexes. I only want to keep 1-2 hens and sell the rest. Most folks want to buy a particular sex, so I hope to be able to differentiate them soon. They are 6 weeks old now.

Some times I'll hear yeeping from the poults and go to find one of them grabbing another on the back of its head, the grabbed one doing all the yelling. Would this mean that the one doing the grabbing is a male? Would he be grabbing another weaker male or grabbing a female?

Also, sometimes I can see that some of their necks flush red through their baby fluff when they get excited. Do only the males do that or also the females?

At this age would the males appear larger with thicker necks? Some of them seem to be different sizes.

Thank you for any input you can give!

 

[Big Dan]

One thing I have noticed about young males is they hunker down and fluff up all the time. Especially towards people dogs or other poults. I'm sure females can do it to but that is very obvious for males. Also if you sit and watch them you can see they birds established pecking order. That can help a lot. Young's ones are overall just hard to tell sex

 

[Sunny Side Up]

My poults are not 7.5 weeks old and I'm really seeing differences now. There are some who are showing a bit of wattle right under their throats, and little caruncle buds are popping up. They also flush a brighter pink/red when they're excited, and seem a bit larger/thicker. These are the ones I'm guessing will be males.

I took 5 of the poults out of the pen to photograph for a Craigslist ad and the whole turkey family got really excited including their mama & the papas. They were peeping & gobbling to each other, and some of the little boys were puffing up into a full display and getting all flushed.

 

[turkeys1355356]

no they every once in while its not comon so its a female

 

[Arielle]

Has anyone had a eastern wild hen grow a beard or did I get shafted and buy a Jake and tom

some girls will grow beards