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CliffB said:
Ok so the silkie is 21 weeks. The smooth showgirl is 23 weeks. The standard showgirl is 22 weeks. The black turken is 23 weeks and she has laid 14 eggs. The brahma is 20 weeks and has laid 1 egg. I just need one of them to go broody once i have some eggs stored up. I could end up with sizzles, showgirls, turkens, mille fleur coloring, silkies and everything in between.
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If I were you I would give the smooth showgirl a couple more weeks then leave 3 eggs in her favorite nest, if you know which nest that is and see what happens. I don't know about anything about Turkens but the 4 Turken hatching eggs I got from the swap are developing.
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I have 33 eggs including 12 from Flower in my new HovaBator. Today I check to see if any of the 33 are not developing and kick them out.
 
Flowerbh said:
My girls are not happy that their run still has so much snow!
That's the top of their coop. Run is all that snowy hill behind it! Just took this photo!
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If you REALLY loved your chickens, you would grab a drop cord and a hair dryer and go out there and melt all that snow for them.
 
Ok, so I posted this in the turkey forum and either those people are snobs or my story just doesn't interest them so I'm going to bore you people with it now.... This is what happened when we introduced the two new turkey hens we got at the swap into the big pen....... And I got some really cool video of all this.

Hanks has been living with only chickens since we ate his girlfriends for Thanksgiving and Christmas. So you can only imagine how fast he blew up when I sat the first girl inside the pen with him. The funny thing is, I think she was even more randy than he was. I sat her on the ground just inside the door of the pen. She went straight to the ground in a submissive, come do me, posture. Unfortunately, our frizzled rooster tried to take advantage first. He got on top and was trying to do his thing. Of course he couldn't hold onto the back of her head and reach the sweet spot at the same time so no harm, no fowl. Sorry.
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Anyhow, she just sat there and let him TRY to do his thing. I moved toward them to run him off and she got up. Another rooster came running up and grabbed her by the back of the neck and ripped out a bunch of feathers. I finally got that rooster away from her and she reassumed the position and Hanks did his thing. I put the second hen in and the same thing happened. Hanks covered both of them at least 3 times within 15 minutes. The girls were all too happy to oblige him.

Ok, so after all that rambling... this is our first time with turkeys of breeding age. The first two females were broad breasted whites and were there just over the fall and winter until we processed them. These 2 girls will be his permanent harem. So the girls being under a year but clearly sexually mature enough to know how to assume the position and lie there willingly, are they old enough to actually lay fertile eggs? It's my understanding some geese won't lay fertile eggs their first season, so I don't know if turkeys can be the same. Hanks is an Eastern Wild. The girls we got at a swap and were told they were likely Eastern/Bronze mixes. They are quite pretty so whatever they are, the mixes should produce nice offspring.

BTW, the 2 roosters that were so abusive to the turkey hens got ejected from the pen. They're now free ranging it with a bunch of other bachelors. You would THINK the hens would have stopped it considering they're 3 times the size of the roosters OR that Hanks would have whipped their butts for bothering his girls. Silly birds.
 
Jeez Robo. Perhaps they're not snobby.. perhaps they're just out laying down filming rights to what appears to be potentially the most riveting feature of 2016.. "50 Shades of TurKAY"..
 
I don't want to call out any names but BYC has an amazing reputation in my business for being loaded with snobs. I hear that quite a bit from people who venture on here to ask questions.
 
valleychicks said:
If I were you I would give the smooth showgirl a couple more weeks then leave 3 eggs in her favorite nest, if you know which nest that is and see what happens. I don't know about anything about Turkens but the 4 Turken hatching eggs I got from the swap are developing.
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I have 33 eggs including 12 from Flower in my new HovaBator. Today I check to see if any of the 33 are not developing and kick them out.
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Ohhhh, I can't wait to see what you get!

I am trying to do the staggered hatching and oh, my, gosh, it is getting confusing.....mostly because I have to keep the hatches small to be able to go into my Brinsea Mini for lockdown. (suppose to hatch 10 eggs, but I played around with it and if I HAD to (LOL) I can fit 12 eggs in there. My problem had been that I was only getting about 65% fertility rate when I just had the one rooster with 25 hens, so I was putting in more eggs than I should, but now I think another rooster has kicked in, sooooo, when I was putting in 12-14 eggs, thinking that only 8-10 would be fertile, well, that theory isn't working anymore. So, I am having a hard time deciding which eggs to hatch. hahaha...
Am I bad that I am only putting in my blue and green eggs? My poor brown and white egg layers don't get to have babies. That, of course, would all change if I had a blue egg gene rooster! So, if I happen to hatch a Lav Ameraucana roo, I will definitely keep it!

Renters had a blast yesterday learning about chickens. Took the babies in and let them all play with them. Good socializing for the chicks, too! Then I showed them all candling. They were fascinated with the little chicks moving around in the egg. I love sharing about the chickens.
 

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