Ask Dr. Tom
Baby mama?
On opening day of the Missouri fall turkey season I shot a juvenile hen, which dressed out at about 6 pounds, containing an ovi-sac with one fully formed egg and two in late development. Considering her age — maybe 5 months — and the time of year, she should not have been carrying. None of my fellow NWTF members and fellow hunter education instructors has ever heard of such anomalies, but our theories run from genetic mutation to space aliens. How can this be?
Kip Crandall
via e-mail
Your juvenile hen was probably a lot older than you think. If you were to look at a group of teenagers in their senior year of high school, you will likely see some that seem very mature for their age, and some that look like they still belong in junior high.
Turkeys are much the same. Some hens have poults very early in the season and some quite later. While they are all the same "grade," they are all maturing at different rates based on hatching date, genetics, food and habitat quality as well as health issues.
A juvenile hen hatched on June 1 would have been about 122 days or 17 weeks old. Wild turkeys attain their full height at that point but not their full weight. A 6-pound dressed hen is a good size for a 4-month old poult. The bird would have weighed about 8 pounds. The mean live weight for 127-day-old female poults is about 6.9 pounds, according to studies on Eastern wild turkeys. Adult hens sometimes retain some juvenile feathers in their second year if they were born late the previous year or delayed their molting. Your bird was more likely 16 months old instead of 17 weeks and was an adult hen that retained much of her first-year characteristics.
As far as the egg issue, she may have had several nesting failures and was a really late bloomer. Turkeys have been documented nesting as late as September. Your hen may be just the odd few that tried to nest in October. — Dr. Tom
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