When is gender identifiable?

[adubsroit]

New to turkeys, have come in the incubator set for a October 8th hatch. Was just wondering, and hoping someone here could give me a time frame as to when they know poults start to differentiate in their looks gender wise. I have read that some males start to strut and gobble as early as 8 weeks, while some females can grow beards faster than their male counterparts.

What's y'alls experience?

 

[farmerlor]

There are of course people who can look at the day old vents and sex the turkeys right away. I am not one of those people so this is my experience: At about 8-12 weeks (seems like I can tell earlier with the Midgets than with the Bourbons) IF you have both males and females you can easily see the difference between them. They will have their big bird feathers and you'll see that the boys are going bald while the girls still have fuzz on their heads. The boys will have thicker legs and bigger feet and you'll see that the snood bump is larger than it is on the girls. Now that I've had both boys and girls for awhile I feel pretty confident that I could sex my birds at that age but if you've never had both sexes to compare at that age it can be difficult. Also, the strutting thing is not always a true predictor of sex. Some of the girlies will strut for awhile although if you can do a pretty accurate gobble or have an older tom who will gobble on command it's fun to watch the reaction of the babies at about 8 weeks because the boys will puff up and strut in response to a gobble and if there's anything cuter than a baby turkey in full strut I don't know what it is.

 

[Lagerdogger]

I think it depends how how much you need to be right

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