YES!!!
We have two week old turkey poults! Three of them. I had incubated the eggs in a homemade incubator I made out of a Styrofoam cooler for three weeks. (My first time ever incubating anything and I thought it went pretty darn well) We checked the remaining eggs that the hen FINALLY decided to sit on and discovered that after 7-8 days none of those were fertile. So we pulled an after dark egg swap. Bella shooed the hissing hen off her eggs and held her at bay long enough for Hannah and myself to swap out the flourishing three week old embryos for the duds. Sure enough, five days later there were pips in all the eggs and the hen was beside herself. Twenty-four hours later Bella did a quick check to ensure no troubles were taking place and could see that the poults had zipped their eggs, were breathing, and chirping to the hen. A few hours later and they were all hatched and that mama hen wasn't sure what to do. However, she has proven to be a very good mama and is very tolerant of us. Except for checking the poults on hatch day and the occasional catching to place back in the maternity pen with the mom (yes they can shimmy through the fence), we haven't been interfering.
We guess that in about one more week they will not fit through the fencing anymore and therefore, will not be able to cause the Hen high anxiety!
We love to watch them and it is very interesting to watch them interact with mama, the other hen and the Tom (who struts around and acts like the proud papa). Except the joke is on him.......this particular hen (Snowflake) was already fertilized from a Tom at her previous home.
We are hopeful that our Tom (Louis) will begin to reproduce with our other hen (Luna). Yep! The girls named the Turkeys and they are waiting with baited breath to see which sex the poults are to name them appropriately too!
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