Hatching Turkey Eggs

In my experience, turkey eggs are some of the easiest poultry to hatch--even if you're a beginner. In this article, I'm going to walk you step-by-step through the method I've used to repeatedly achieve 100% hatch rates, using small tabletop incubators.

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I've been hearing from a lot of fellow homesteaders lately, that they're finding turkey eggs especially hard to hatch. Watching a broody hen hatch out a fluffy little brood can be especially heartwarming, but females of any poultry species aren't always broody when you need them to be, and sometimes you really do need to be able to reliably hatch out eggs yourself!

I'm hoping this post might help anybody who wants to confidently and successfully hatch their own turkey poults, using an incubator. It's so much fun, and so rewarding!

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This post is going to be a longer one, because I want to be thorough, and am going to talk the whole process through, right from the beginning. If you'd just like to quickly get the temperature and incubator humidity settings, please feel free to tap that "jump to" button below, and it will take you right to the printable cheat sheet.

Jump to the cheat sheet

For the rest of you, let's start at the very beginning.

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Sourcing fertile eggs

If you're hatching turkey eggs, they're going to come from one of two places: your flock, or someone else's flock. If you're looking to hatch eggs from your own flock, you definitely have an advantage of being able to control the feed and living conditions of your mother hen, as well as the way you handle the eggs once you gather them.

What can you do to help your turkey hen lay the best fertile hatching eggs?

To get fertile eggs, the most important thing you'll need is a tom turkey. In my experience, most male turkeys begin mating activity in the spring, once there are enough hours of daylight. Usually, I expect to start seeing turkey eggs a few weeks after observing mating behavior.

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Unlike chickens, you probably won't see your tom mounting the hens every day. (This is a good thing, since toms can be huge and mating takes a greater toll on turkey hens than it does with chickens). Rest assured that just a few matings over the course of the laying season is generally adequate to ensure that you're continually getting fertile eggs from your hens.

Feeding a high-quality diet to your turkey flock is one of the earliest investments you can make in ensuring a successful outcome with your hatching endeavors. Healthy hens lay healthy eggs!

Allowing the hens to free-range and adjust their diet to their current nutritional demands is definitely beneficial, if you can.

Make sure your hens have clean nests, with abundant bedding material. Hatching clean, unwashed eggs generally gives the best results.

So to help ensure clean eggs, you'll want to keep an eye on the nesting areas and make sure they're fastidiously free of mud and poop.

If you do have your own fertile turkey eggs, you may want to consider advertising any extras for sale--it's a great way of bringing in extra income a small homestead. Turkey hatching eggs are harder to find than many other types of hatching eggs, and can command a really strong price, whether sold by the egg, or by the dozen.

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Gathering and storing hatching eggs

Unless you have a large flock of turkeys, chances are you may need to gather eggs for several days before you have enough to put in your incubator. My turkeys tend to lay in the afternoon. I know others who have girls that lay in the mornings. Whatever time of day your hens lay, it's a good idea to go gather the eggs while they're still fresh and as clean as possible.

Store the eggs in a cool place...between 45-60F is ideal. It's a good idea to turn the eggs a few times each day, while they're waiting to be set in the incubator. I find the easiest way to do this is to store them in a carton, and tip it from side to side.

You'll want to set the eggs within 7 days of being laid, if possible. It IS very possible to hatch eggs that are older than a week (and we've all see wild mama hens with a dozen babies or more, which came from eggs that clearly took her more than a week to lay!) But you'll get the best and easiest hatch with eggs that are set to incubate sooner rather than later.

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Where to source hatching eggs if you don't have your own

Hatching shipped eggs always comes with its own challenges, so I usually suggest trying to source fertile turkey eggs locally, if possible. Some places you might find them:

• Ask in local Facebook homesteading groups, or do a search for posts with the word "turkeys" and you'll likely see lots of farms working with turkeys that may be happy to sell you some fertile eggs.
• Ask in the egg hatching groups, like hatchaholics anonymous
• Do a web search for local breeders who work with the type of turkeys you're looking for
• Ask at the feed store if they know anyone who has turkey flocks nearby (my local feed store is priceless for helping people make these kind of connections!)

If you do need to order eggs online, don't despair. It always is more of a gamble to hatch shipped eggs, regardless of how carefully you incubate them. BUT, I will never forget the time I had a nearly 100% hatch rate with quail eggs that hatched in shipment, and it definitely can be worth it...especially if the breed of turkeys you want hatch isn't available nearby.

Should you wash turkey hatching eggs?

I've alluded to this above, but I find it's best to hatch clean, unwashed eggs. If your eggs are dirty, covered in mud or poop, I strongly encourage you to ignore the Facebook photos of people stuffing incubators full of filthy eggs (if you haven't seen these, count yourself blessed...it's a thing!). This is great way to end up with bacteria in your incubator and it can really end poorly.

Go ahead and wash those dirty eggs, or buff them clean with a dry cloth, and then set them. They'll be fine.

Preparing the incubator

The day before you want to set your turkey eggs, go ahead and get out your incubator and make sure it's well-cleaned and sanitized. Even though I put away my incubators clean at the end of a season, I always give them a good cleaning again before setting them for each hatch.

Plug in your incubator, and let it come up to temperature. I always like to nail down the temperature, before getting the humidity level adjusted if necessary. If it's a digital incubator with a pre-set temperature and built-in thermometer, I cannot strongly enough suggest that you get a separate thermometer/hygrometer for monitoring the conditions. These ones are inexpensive, and I've found them to be reliable.

If you need to adjust the temperature, do it a little at a time, waiting for the temperature to stabilize before tweaking it again. Don't rush this process. You want to make sure that your incubator is steadily holding the correct temperature for at least 6 hours before putting your eggs in.

Keep in mind that it's far better to have to store your eggs an extra day, and delay setting the incubator while you get the setting steadily correct, than to set them now and have the temperature fluctuating for the first day or two as you struggle to get it to hold the right temperature.

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What temperature should the incubator be for turkey eggs?

99.5°F, just like chicken eggs.

Cal Roberts of Roberts Farm was the original person behind the Hatchaholics Anonymous group on facebook, and is a hatching guru. He suggests starting out at 100.5° for the first three days, and this is perfectly safe and not a bad method. However, Cal is also the first to remind everyone that finding what works in your own micro-climate is a big part of having consistent 100% hatch rates, and for me, here in Maine, I find that maintaining the incubator at 99.5 from setting until lockdown has been ideal.

This guidance is for a circulated-air incubator with a fan, which is always the best way to go, if you possibly can. If you must use a still air incubator, make sure that you're monitoring the temperature at the level of the top of the eggs, and increase your target temperature by one degree.

What should the relative humidity of the incubator be?

When the incubator is at 99.5° F, the humidity should be about 40%. If you're having a hard time keeping it steady, just do your best to keep in a window between 38-43%.

Any lower than this, and the poults will lose too much moisture and may not be robust enough to successfully hatch. Higher than this, and the poults may be big and "doughy"...too large to adjust their body position at hatch time, and successfully zip their way out of the shell. Much higher than this, and the poults risk drowning in the shell once they internally pip.

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Install the egg turner, if you're using one

If your incubator came with an egg turner, you'll want to double-check that it's large enough to safely handle turkey eggs. If it's advertised as being able to accommodate duck eggs, than it probably is. You can see from the picture above that my ducks' eggs (on the left) are just the tiniest bit bigger than the eggs laid by my turkeys.

Depending on the style of turner, you can usually place a couple of test eggs in there, then gently move it through the full range of motion that it goes through when turning the eggs. If the eggs get stuck, or bumped by plastic as it goes through a turning cycle, you may be better off skipping the auto-turner, and turning the eggs by hand.

(Finally) setting the eggs

With the incubator set up, and the temperature and humidity stable and correct,it's just about time to go ahead and set the eggs!

If you've been storing them in a cool place, bring them out and let them rest for a couple of hours until they reach room temperature, and no longer feel cool to the touch.

Because you'll need to be turning them three times a day, it's a great idea to mark them with a soft pencil on one side, so that you can easily tell which ones you've turned.

Once the eggs are marked, and at room temperature, go ahead and put them in the incubator!

How long do turkey eggs take to hatch?

The incubation period for turkeys is 28 days, just like most ducks. So four weeks from when you set your eggs, you can hope to be watching adorable baby turkeys hatch!

Turning the eggs

Turkey eggs need to be turned at least 3x daily during incubation. If you're using an automatic turner, this will turn the eggs fore you more often than that, and that's totally fine!

If you're not using an auto-turn device, you'll want to manually turn all of the eggs three times a day. If you work away from home, I suggest doing this in the morning, then when you get home from work, then again last thing before bed. It's ok if the turnings aren't evenly spaced throughout the day. Just do the best you can, and it will be fine!

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How (and when) to candle turkey eggs

Candling eggs is the process of shining a bright light through the eggshell, to get an idea of what's going on inside. Think of it like an ultrasound for hatching eggs.

At a minimum, I suggest candling the eggs twice: once around day 10, and again right before lockdown, on day 25.

You can candle with a "candler" that's specifically made for the purpose, or with a bright flashlight. My favorite way to candle eggs though, is with the built-in flashlight on my phone. I've used several "real" candlers over the years, including a couple of expensive ones, and the phone light works better than any of them.

Candling turkey eggs on day ten

By the time you get to day ten, you should be able to see a good network of veins, and a little dark embryo in the center, moving around. Don't worry if you don't see movement, it's not always noticeable!

If, however, you see a "blood ring"...a mostly clear eggs with a reddish ring and no veins, that's a non-viable egg that you can go ahead and toss. Blood rings happen when developing embryos stop growing, soon after getting started. It's sad, but it does happen sometimes!

If the egg is totally clear, or you see nothing but a vaguely yellow yolk floating around, that's an egg that's not viable also. By day ten, if an egg were going to hatch, you would definitely see very noticeable growth. It's best to toss any eggs like this, because leaving them in there invites the chance of them rotting and introducing bacteria to the other eggs. Not a chance worth taking!

Candling turkey eggs on day 25

By day 25, most of the turkey egg will look solidly dark. You might see a little movement, but it's ok if you don't...it's crowded in there! What you don't want to see is an egg that's mostly light colored, with just a small dark area. Also, if you see the contents sloshing around as you move the egg, that's an embryo that didn't make it and has started to decompose. You'll want to discard any eggs that are clearly not viable, before putting the incubator on lockdown.

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Lockdown

When you're done candling the eggs on day 25, it's time to put the incubator on "lockdown". What this means is simply that you're getting the incubator ready for those poults to hatch.

Start by taking out the egg turner if you've been using one. You don't want any little feet getting caught in the moving parts.

If you want to, you can put a little non-slip shelf liner in the bottom of the incubator to help make it a bit less slippery as the poults find their legs and start learning to walk, but it's not necessary. (I do find it can help make cleanup a little easier after hatch though!)

Lower the temperature of the incubator to 98.5. This helps reduce fatigue and overheating as the poults work hard to hatch.

Make sure the vents are open, or the plugs are removed from the vents, depending on your style of incubator. It's important to make sure that there's plenty of oxygen in the incubator as the poults hatch.

Raise the humidity to 60-65%. Contrary to some of the vocal opinions in online forums, you do not want your humidity to be higher than this. I've seen far more hatchlings die from humidity that's too high during lockdown, than too low. If you find that you've raised the humidity too much, it's ok to open the incubator and remove water. It's much better to do this, than allow the humidity level to stay elevated.

Hatching

Every hatch is unique, just like every human or animal birth. In general though, you can expect that you might hear the first little sounds coming from your incubator on day 27. This means the poults will have "internally pipped".

That means breaking through the inner shell membrane, which is how you're able to hear them now.

It's ok if you don't see a pip in the shell right away. It can easily take 12 hours or more from when a poult internally breaks through that membrane, until they externally pip through the shell.

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How long does it take turkey poults to hatch?

Usually less than 24 hours from when you first see a pip in the shell.

It's been my experience that poults are even faster at the business of getting themselves hatched, than chicks. I've had poults go from pip to fully-hatched in less than an hour. I've also watched them take 18 hours or more.

In general, once you see a pip in the shell, you're most likely to have a fully-hatched baby within 24 hours. This is much faster than ducklings, which can easily take 36 hours or more to hatch.

Once the poults are hatched

If you can, it's generally best to wait and take all of the poults out of the incubator at once, after the hatch is complete. Wait until they're dry and well fluffed out, and then they're ready to move to the brooder.

If you have a long gap between hatching, and the first babies are dry and active while a few are still working on hatching, it's ok to quickly open the incubator to remove the babies that are ready, while allowing the others to continue hatching.

Should you help a turkey poult hatch?

Usually a poult will hatch just fine on its own. It's very easy to do more harm than good when helping poultry of any kind to hatch.

If you're concerned about whether your poults are progressing adequately, start by double checking your temperature and humidity levels. Is the temperature no higher than 98.5? Is the humidity no higher than 65%? If the answer is no to either of those questions, I'd encourage you to fix that first.

If it's been more than 24 hours since the poult broke through the shell, or if it's been more than 8 hours since it made any progress after having begun to zip, I might start to consider whether assistance might be necessary.

If you do feel like you might need to intervene, begin by chipping through both the outer shell and the inside membrane, just a tiny bit at a time. Try widening the existing hole in the shell just a little bit on each side, helping to get a "zip line" going around the circumference of the shell.

If at any point you see blood, immediately put the egg back in the incubator, and wait at least half an hour before trying again. Sometimes, just a little bit of help is enough to get a baby "unstuck" and making progress again.

One of the most important things to keep in mind if you do help, is that you don't want to chip off pieces of the outer shell, while leaving the membrane underneath in tact. This exposes the membrane to the air, which allows it to harden, and turn leather-like...trapping the poult in the shell.

Introducing food and water

Once your babies have hatched, and you've moved them to the brooder, it's ok to go ahead and give them water and food. A non-medicated game-bird starter mash is the best bet for feed. For water, you'll want to use either a chick waterer, or a shallow dish with stones or marbles in it, so that the poults don't accidentally drown or get themselves soaked.

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Hatching turkeys eggs with my kids is some of the MOST fun I've had as a homesteading mama. I hope this post helps as you hatch your own adorable turkey poults!

Still have questions about hatching turkey eggs?

Please feel free to ask away in the comments below, and I'll try to help!

Have cute-as-a-button turkey baby pictures you'd like to show off? Share them to the facebook page! We all need more cute baby pictures in our lives!