My turkey hatched chickens

Her own eggs got smashed so I gave her some chicken eggs. She hatched three, and is very protective of her tiny babies:



Turkey is a Royal Palm, babies are half Mystery Bantam, half Partridge and Barred Rock.

That is a switch.

Most turkeys are such notoriously lousy mothers,that many turkey farms use chickens to hatch their turkeys.

This hen wanted to hatch chicks so badly she sat on air for a week after her own eggs were smashed by the tom, who apparently wanted to sit on them too, so I finally gave her some chicken eggs to sit on (the tom by this time had lost interest in sitting on eggs). She didn't hatch many, but she seems to feel very strongly about these chicks. She's very protective, I had to take about 15 photos before I was able to get one in which the chicks are clearly visible; she kept getting in the way.

Well, John, you were right. This evening she decided it would be a brilliant plan to take the babies out into the woods at dusk, to be eaten by raccoons later. Fortunately I was able to spot her hunkering down in the weeds and herd her and the chicks back into the pen. I guess I'll keep the door closed tomorrow....

Wild turkeys do just fine. I believe that the breeders have succeeded in developing a brainless creature.

I know of a case where momma led her chicks across an open field during a thunderstorm.
She was the only one large enough to not drown.

Yes, wild turkeys are very different from domestics. Saw a couple of wild turkeys in our back field this morning. These Royal Palms are far from their wild roots. Though I love the mild manners of the turkey, they are hard to raise death magnets, in my limited experience....

Well here's a wild turkey question: mine are Black Spanish - pretty close to a wild turkey. All four of my hens hatched out eggs. Now one of the hens is setting, again, on thirteen eggs. We know those aren't old eggs - but we thought they only laid eggs once a year?

Is this an oddity or do they commonly lay more than once a year?

Domestication means year round food and shelter. Perhaps, in their domestication, they turn off the internal clocks that say to lay eggs each spring, so the chicks will be ready to leave the nest before winter sets in.

Well I certainly don't know what I'm going to do with all these turkeys. I'd better start keeping a better eye out for eggs because I would rather have just eaten the eggs in this case.

My Royal Palm seems to just lay in the Spring. It might vary between breeds.

that is just too cool, we have wild turkey here and they seem to do just fine