Is it possible to breed a Heritage tom to a Broad Breasted hen, successfully?

[brewchick]

I searched for a bit, prior to posting. I did not see any current or past posts that address and fully answer the question asked. I did find one post from many years ago, but it did not have a solid answer, with any results to confirm it.

We are new to turkeys. We have purchased 7 altogether. due to circumstances beyond our control, it looks like we may have two Heritage bronze Toms and two Broad Breasted Bronze hens. We also have 3 Bourbon Reds, and likely have a breeding trio, just waiting for them to show signs to confirm this. the Bourbon Reds are not really part of this post discussion.

Our original plan was to have a breeding trio of each breed. It looks like we were unlucky enough to get two heritage Bronze Toms and the third poult in the original trio died at three weeks. When we were finally able to find anyone selling turkeys to replace it, the were only selling Broad Breasted Bronze.

So, now it looks like we have two heritage toms and two broad breasted hens.

Can we NATURALLY breed a heritage tom to a broad breasted hen? I have read that breeding broad breasted is not generally successful due to the size and "mutant" shape of the broad breasted variety. however, this is generally spoken about concerning toms. is a hen capable of being SUCCESSFULLY bred to a heritage tom?

I know that in theory anything is possible. Has anyone done this with tangible results? at what success rate? would we just end up wasting time, feed, and space to try this? should we just eat the Broad Breasted and call it a loss for this year?

 

[R2elk]

I searched for a bit, prior to posting. I did not see any current or past posts that address and fully answer the question asked. I did find one post from many years ago, but it did not have a solid answer, with any results to confirm it.

We are new to turkeys. We have purchased 7 altogether. due to circumstances beyond our control, it looks like we may have two Heritage bronze Toms and two Broad Breasted Bronze hens. We also have 3 Bourbon Reds, and likely have a breeding trio, just waiting for them to show signs to confirm this. the Bourbon Reds are not really part of this post discussion.

Our original plan was to have a breeding trio of each breed. It looks like we were unlucky enough to get two heritage Bronze Toms and the third poult in the original trio died at three weeks. When we were finally able to find anyone selling turkeys to replace it, the were only selling Broad Breasted Bronze.

So, now it looks like we have two heritage toms and two broad breasted hens.

Can we NATURALLY breed a heritage tom to a broad breasted hen? I have read that breeding broad breasted is not generally successful due to the size and "mutant" shape of the broad breasted variety. however, this is generally spoken about concerning toms. is a hen capable of being SUCCESSFULLY bred to a heritage tom?

I know that in theory anything is possible. Has anyone done this with tangible results? at what success rate? would we just end up wasting time, feed, and space to try this? should we just eat the Broad Breasted and call it a loss for this year?

You probably did not use the correct words in your search because this subject has been discussed many times. It can be difficult to search for certain topics. It does help to limit your search area to the Turkeys forum when searching for things about turkeys.

Heritage toms can successfully breed with Broad Breasted hens. It helps if the hens are yearlings. They lose their flexibility as they age which limits their ability to properly cooperate in the breeding act as they get older. Of course there is also the part about them not having a long life expectancy.

I have had a yearling Bourbon Red tom successfully naturally breed a BBW hen. Due to incubator problems, only one poult successfully hatched. It was a Red Bronze that grew nearly as fast and got nearly as big as the broad breasted turkeys did.

Even with the heritage toms, they lose their flexibility as they age. This is why a well known breeder of heritage turkeys replaces his breeding toms every 3 to 4 years.

There are others that breed heritage toms to broad breasted hens on a regular basis because they are trying to produce a natural breeding turkey that is heavier than normal heritage turkeys.

 

[Deep Roots]

We have been raising and breeding turkeys for 4 years now. We purposely crossed royal palm and heritage bronze and got some fantastic hybrids which brood well, are decent mamas, and get a little larger than either the royal palm or the heritage bronze. We have gotten requests for birds 30lbs+ and I'm curious other than just purchasing BBB poults each year if we can cross our hybrids with the BBB to get a naturally breeding larger size turkey. The BBW we hated and abandoned them after just a single season. The heritage breeds we love and other than a few problem children have been really good to us. We gather and hatch about 100 poults via incubator and then let the hens set on their own nests for the last 3/4 weeks up till the end of April. After that we collect all the eggs so we don't have any late poults. We still have hens laying and its now December!
Any other thoughts? Most folks we talk to don't do a whole lot of crossbreeding or custom feed mixes. We appear to be one of the only farms interested in such in our region in OH according to the hatcheries and feed suppliers we talk to.

 

[Dragonteeth]

I searched for a bit, prior to posting. I did not see any current or past posts that address and fully answer the question asked. I did find one post from many years ago, but it did not have a solid answer, with any results to confirm it.

We are new to turkeys. We have purchased 7 altogether. due to circumstances beyond our control, it looks like we may have two Heritage bronze Toms and two Broad Breasted Bronze hens. We also have 3 Bourbon Reds, and likely have a breeding trio, just waiting for them to show signs to confirm this. the Bourbon Reds are not really part of this post discussion.

Our original plan was to have a breeding trio of each breed. It looks like we were unlucky enough to get two heritage Bronze Toms and the third poult in the original trio died at three weeks. When we were finally able to find anyone selling turkeys to replace it, the were only selling Broad Breasted Bronze.

So, now it looks like we have two heritage toms and two broad breasted hens.

Can we NATURALLY breed a heritage tom to a broad breasted hen? I have read that breeding broad breasted is not generally successful due to the size and "mutant" shape of the broad breasted variety. however, this is generally spoken about concerning toms. is a hen capable of being SUCCESSFULLY bred to a heritage tom?

I know that in theory anything is possible. Has anyone done this with tangible results? at what success rate? would we just end up wasting time, feed, and space to try this? should we just eat the Broad Breasted and call it a loss for this year?

We have a broad breasted hen that is sitting on eggs that are starting to hatch today. Sired by a heritage tom

 

[R2elk]

We have a broad breasted hen that is sitting on eggs that are starting to hatch today. Sired by a heritage tom

I highly recommend that you take the poults as they get dry and put them in a brooder. Too often poults get stepped on by BB hens. No matter how hard they try, they are not good mothers. They are not capable of making the delicate foot maneuvers that heritage hens make.

 

[Ninaamaya]

We have a broad breasted hen that is sitting on eggs that are starting to hatch today. Sired by a heritage tom

How did this go? I hear that the BB turkey hens are sometimes too big and clumsy to sit on eggs or not crush chicks- I hope you had success!