Royal Palm and Turkey breeding

[warcard]

Woohoo! Our first Royal Palm just hatched!

Anything I need to do differently than our Blue Slate babies?

Also does the male need to cover the female everyday for her to lay fertile eggs? We traded a Blue Slate girl for our Royal Palm female. She had a RP tom with her at the first house, and this is the egg she laid on her way home. She kept laying for about a week then stopped until we helped our BS tom cover her (she squats for us, but I haven't seen her squat voluntarily for our toms), and then started laying a couple days later. I can't leave her in with the tom since his other girls bully her.

Thanks!

 

[SueNH]

Let the ladies sort out the pecking rank. It won't be as bad as chickens in most cases. Let them see each other for a week or so then let them together when you have time to watch.
Don't intervene unless it's real serious.

She should be fertile for about month, same as chickens. Let the tom and her in together for a bit for egg insurance.

 

[Kev]

Care is same. All domestic turkeys are the same species.

Turkeys have a much longer fertility period than chickens- wild turkey hens in the wild often breed only once for their entire clutch/season.

It's pretty well known that domestic turkey hens can store sperm 3 months pretty easily, some cases even pointed to the possibility of a hen holding viable sperm for much longer. So no they do not need to be bred daily.. once or twice a week will be quite more than enough, especially if you want the new tom to father some poults out of her. You will not be 100% assured that all poults will be his, it's very possible babies from the previous tom will still pop up in the hatches for this season. If purity is important you HAVE to separate the hens before breeding season starts and keep them separated as long as you are collecting eggs for hatching. Just one "oops mating" can "ruin" an entire season of hatching.