We have had a busy time with babies on the farm this spring! We started incubating turkey eggs from our trio of Bourbon Red Turkeys – two hens and one Tom meant plenty of eggs to get into the incubator. We had several successful hatches, and found new homes for all the poults with the exception of two we held back to keep on our farm. With two, it was easy to hold them daily when they were in the brooder in the house. We hoped this would create a strong bond between them and their “people” (us!) that will carry into their adulthood.
Here’s some turkey terminology for you:
A female turkey is a hen. A male turkey is a Tom or sometimes referred to as a gobbler.
A juvenile female turkey is a Jennie and a male is a Jake
A baby turkey is a Poult
Bourbon Red a Heritage Breed of Turkey.
A heritage turkey retains historic characteristics that are no longer present in the majority of turkeys raised for consumption since the mid-20th century. Heritage turkeys can reproduce without human intervention, have a relatively long lifespan and slower growth rate than turkeys bred for industrial agriculture, and they more closely match the natural behavior and life cycle of wild turkeys.
Heritage turkey breeds include the Auburn, Buff, Black, Bourbon Red, Narragansett, Royal Palm, Slate, Standard Bronze, Pied, Harvey Speckled and Midget White. Heritage turkeys are the minority, with about 25,000 raised annually compared to 200 million turkeys raised industrially and 7 million in the wild.
The Bourbon Red turkey is named for Bourbon County in Kentucky’s Bluegrass region where it originated in the late 1800s, and for it’s reddish-brown plumage.
We use a 100 w light bulb in a heat lamp setup for our brooders. It is safer for the birds, and for us – less risk of a fire hazard and the birds are happy with it. These are in our brooder, two and three days old.
Turkeys take 28 days to hatch. We watch the pipping of the eggs and if one doesn’t make progress in the right amount of time (24 hours) we do go in and help chip the egg and watch for shrink wrapping (where a chick gets stuck in place and can’t move). We have helped chickens hatch, turkeys hatch, emus hatch, and geese, with a very good success rate.
