Aggressive Female Turkey

[CakeMonster]

Hi There!
I own two bourbon red turkeys that are two years old. one of them gets aggressive and fluffs up like a male and gets mean with the others. why?

 

[chooks4life]

Hello and

Turkeys are territorial birds in the wild, hens don't live with other hens, toms and hens don't live together either. Obviously humans have bred against that trait for our benefit. Some breeds get along better than others. Many turkeys don't mind a fair bit of fighting, either, they can be quite aggressive birds, male or female.

Your hen probably feels the breeding season hormones peaking and is experiencing the desire to secure the whole area to herself and her future clutch. Just because there's no tom around doesn't mean she's not expecting a clutch, lol, she will lay and brood as normal in most cases, even though the eggs aren't viable.

In the absence of males most flocks will have at least one female who will take up a male role, sometimes to the extent of including mating. My turkey hens had toms come and go so fast that some of them began displaying and gobbling regularly. They still laid eggs and mothered as normal, mated with toms as normal when the toms were around too, but in between they were 'all tom' lol.

The only turkey I ever had that was colored like yours had that inbred spasm that caused her neck to twist back when she heard water drops, I forget the scientific name offhand... Anyway, my white hens hated her, the blacks didn't care, and eventually the dominant white hen smashed her to death. I had them separate and a nice but ignorant old lady who thought she knew better put them together despite me specifying that she would be killed if that happened. She also put a damaged bantam hen in with the turkey despite me also specifying that must not happen because the banty hen would be killed. Luckily for the bantam, she was only put in with the turkey hen once the turkey hen had been smashed and was dying. Lesser of two evils I guess, lol... Don't trust people with your animals behind your back, is what I learned.

Anyway, long story short, they can and will kill one another if the violence escalates, so if one of your hens continually attacks the other, it's a good precaution to assume the worst and separate them permanently. It took over a year of escalating aggression for it to develop to killing point, even though I'd separated the two hens long before the fatal incident. Turkeys don't seem to change their mind about other animals that they want to kill, they just get more and more aggressive.

Best wishes.

 

[Tambugs]

I have 4 turkey 3 female and 1tom 1female has been laying down a lot more in the daytime and getting more a aggressive with the mail in the mail has been getting more aggressive with a female. They are all about a year old.

 

[R2elk]

I have 4 turkey 3 female and 1tom 1female has been laying down a lot more in the daytime and getting more a aggressive with the male in the male has been getting more aggressive with a female. They are all about a year old.

I recommend that you start your own thread. This thread is from 2014. Neither of these members have been on BYC since 2018.