Poults on the ground with a twist.

[GobbleFarmer]

All 3 of my turkey hens were unsuccessful at hatching any poults with thier first nests this year. One of them has been sitting on an empty nest for about two months and won't give up, I'm almost at the point of throwing some chicken eggs under her so she can just be done... However, one of my other girls was smart and gave up to start anew. The egg fertility was low because my tom is evil so he's locked in a huge run, so if the girls wanted to be bred I'd have to catch em and toss them together . This morning I found she hatched 5 babies two that look like dad (Narragansett) and 3 that look like mom (Black Spanish cross) but one of the black ones somehow got a small wound on her back and promptly developed fly strike. Nobody wanted to put it down and my sister said we should be able to save her easily (she used to work at a vet clinic) so two of my sisters willingly spent a good part of today treating and looking after this unfortunate little creature. Hopefully it'll continue to get better. I'll post some pics of the little angels once I upload/resize them.

[GobbleFarmer]

Here are two off em. Sadly the little one did die.

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Once the eggs start to hatch the hen will wait until the next day to leave the nest to let the yunguns get strong and it gives an extra chance for the slow ones to finish up hatching. So when she took the poults and abandoned the nest- there were still eggs there, some of them were clearly rotten (felt weightless) but others were heavy, so i took the heavy eggs and stuck them under the other hen and it looks like some of them hatched this morning!