The turkeys are outdoing themselves laying right now. We're getting 2 dozen turkey eggs a day and loading up the incubators. The first sets of turkeys are hatching now, and we'll have a new batch every week out of the incubators. Some of the eggs are hatching a day or two early; the turkeys sat on them and partially incubated them before they were collected, throwing off the hatching date.
Turkey eggs take 28 days to hatch; I'll put them in, in batches so that the management of the hatches is easier. It's about as much work to move 100 turkey poults around than it is to move 10, so why not hold all the eggs for a few days until you've got a hundred or two, and then set them all at once.
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5 comments:
bruce,
how do you store your eggs for hatching? in a regular fridge? We're looking into hatching next year.
I keep the eggs at cool room temperature; 60-65 degrees. You'll get the best hatch rates if you set them as they're laid, but they'll keep a week or 10 days pretty well; 90% hatch rate for a 7 day wait, 85% for a 10 day, etc.
Thanks Bruce
Do you sell day old turkeys?
Not this year; I've been struggling with producing enough turkey poults to meet the demand for thanksgiving turkeys, so I'm reserving the hatch this year to make sure that I have enough to sell as finished birds.
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