At my taxidermy shop, we have corn out for the turkeys so I get to watch them all summer. It doesn't look real good for poultry production this year. I'm pretty sure we lost some at the end of May with a cold rainy week end. I'm seeing some around but no where near as many as last year. I'm in south central Pa. What are you guys seeing? I worry over them like a mother.lol
I'm in central pa as well. Saw a few batches so far. Saw an old hen with 9 last evening. They were about quail size. Saw one with 11 last week. Also saw one that only had 2! I'm always on the lookout and I'm always a bit worried when I don't see as many as I think I should but there ain't much I can do about it! On a side note, I don't worry or blame the weather too much with poult survival. I worry much more about the increasing predators, namely fishers. Our game commission thought it wise to reintroduce fishers to the state and by doing so introduced a perfect poult killing machine. Add in the bobcats that the game commission try's so hard to get to expand and you have double trouble! I never will understand why certain people feel the need to restore an animal that has been absent from an environment for so many years. So much changes in those years that a once viable animal can easily become a detrimental one in today's world!
Quote from: Farmboy27 on June 17, 2016, 06:17:43 PM
I'm in central pa as well. Saw a few batches so far. Saw an old hen with 9 last evening. They were about quail size. Saw one with 11 last week. Also saw one that only had 2! I'm always on the lookout and I'm always a bit worried when I don't see as many as I think I should but there ain't much I can do about it! On a side note, I don't worry or blame the weather too much with poult survival. I worry much more about the increasing predators, namely fishers. Our game commission thought it wise to reintroduce fishers to the state and by doing so introduced a perfect poult killing machine. Add in the bobcats that the game commission try's so hard to get to expand and you have double trouble! I never will understand why certain people feel the need to restore an animal that has been absent from an environment for so many years. So much changes in those years that a once viable animal can easily become a detrimental one in today's world!
The weather has the opportunity to kill far more poults than any fisher or bobcat. Put bad weather with those two and you have a perfect storm of sorts for low survival rates.
We had some wet, but we sure didn't have any cool weather since the hatch. I suspect we did pretty good on the hatch. It was good last year with similar, very wet weather. I guess they learn to deal with that.
Quote from: snapper1982 on June 17, 2016, 06:34:49 PM
Quote from: Farmboy27 on June 17, 2016, 06:17:43 PM
I'm in central pa as well. Saw a few batches so far. Saw an old hen with 9 last evening. They were about quail size. Saw one with 11 last week. Also saw one that only had 2! I'm always on the lookout and I'm always a bit worried when I don't see as many as I think I should but there ain't much I can do about it! On a side note, I don't worry or blame the weather too much with poult survival. I worry much more about the increasing predators, namely fishers. Our game commission thought it wise to reintroduce fishers to the state and by doing so introduced a perfect poult killing machine. Add in the bobcats that the game commission try's so hard to get to expand and you have double trouble! I never will understand why certain people feel the need to restore an animal that has been absent from an environment for so many years. So much changes in those years that a once viable animal can easily become a detrimental one in today's world!
The weather has the opportunity to kill far more poults than any fisher or bobcat. Put bad weather with those two and you have a perfect storm of sorts for low survival rates.
Every spring has bad weather. Very seldom have we ever had a "perfect spring" for poults. Turkeys are designed to survive the spring weather(if not, they would have become extinct long ago). Around here the population never seemed to suffer from "bad weather". But the last few years the population is deffinatly dropping. I'm sure that damp wet weather doesn't help but it doesn't have the catastrophic effect that some people think. Several scientific studies have been done and they all say that wet weather has little to no affect on poult survival. So really the only thing that has changed in my area is the huge increase in fishers and bobcats over the past several years. Don't tell me that they aren't an issue!
South Jersey here...Had a hen lay 15 eggs. Hatched 14. The next day (cold rain) she had 4...A couple of days later, 3. A few days later,2. And then none...
Saw a different hen here the other day. 1 poult still a fuzz ball. I'd say a few days old.
I think that cold rain did them in. I'm hearing reports from others that seem to indicate poor survival this year...
I have 3 hens at the farm that have not shown up with any yet. Just saw them yesterday.
We had a great hatch of our own Easterns this year with 270 eggs hatching and 265 surviving. Boy do we have some beautiful poults this year. Moved the first batch into thier growing pen last evening. Was really neat to watch them roost for the first time.
Anyone looking for Easterns we got em.
Personally I worry about hawks as much as anything else at this stage of the game. We are absolutely loaded with them around here. Some bobcats,fishers and weasels but mainly hawks. I think they grab more pults than most realize.
I saw about 10 poults in late May in NY. A good sign!!
I wouldn't worry about a couple cool days or some rainy weather it takes prolonged cool and wet weather combined to cause hypothermia in the 1st 2 weeks of their life the hatch is usually spread out enough to have some survival even with bad periods of weather or some lost to predaton that is why 1 farm may not see many and down the road several miles another guy is reporting lot poults
I went today to the farm here in W Tn and saw 3 lone hens, was thinking at least 1 of them should have had poults with her.
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Last week I had 2 hens in my backyard. Haven't seen any poults yet. I have been expecting them to show pretty soon.
I see two different hens around my house everyday an neither has little ones. I'm in central nj
Had a hen walk through the yard about 1:30. No poults yet.
I saw a hen with a bunch of poults yesterday, was driving so couldn't count them. Spoke with someone today who has two hens that regularly visit her yard, one hen has 8 poults and the other has 12.
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Hope they got threw the wet spring here , population seems on the rise and could miss a few bad hatches for a few more years
Saw a hen today, in my yard, with 5 little fuzz balls. Couldn't have been more than a few days old...That's encouraging...
Saw a hen tonight with 8-10 chicks about the size of quail here in SW MI.
I finally saw some today in the mountains of western NC. Weather has been fairly decent, now if they'll just stay out of the road....
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Saw 10-12 today with four hens in Southwest Missouri. They were all about pigeon sized--past the most critical period.
Quote from: Happy on June 18, 2016, 07:38:33 AM
Personally I worry about hawks as much as anything else at this stage of the game. We are absolutely loaded with them around here. Some bobcats,fishers and weasels but mainly hawks. I think they grab more pults than most realize.
I'm not a biologist by any means, but it just hit me when I read this that it may be part of our recent turkey population successes. We have a lot of thinned pines from the past couple years and plenty of undergrowth beneath them. I bet that helps protect young poults from airborn predators.
I took the wife and kids on a drive around one of our South/Central Florida WMAs this Saturday. We rode for about 4 hrs and probably saw 40 birds, several jakes, a few Toms and a bunch of hens but not the first poult. I was scratching my head the whole time and kept mentioning to my wife every time we passed a group of hens how I couldn't believe there were no little ones. When we got back to the check station I was talking to the girl in the office and I mentioned we had seen some turkeys, she asked how many poults I had seen and said the counts were not looking good at all, she was concerned that the wet weather effected the nests more than usual. Not a good sign for next year.
Just checked on the hen next to my house. She is down to 6 now. Looks like they are getting their flight feathers
I just went to drop off a thank you card and small gift for a land-owner (who unfortunately I believe has passed on)...
I saw two different hens with poults... One had 10 chicken-sized poults, all of which looked healthy... (I have no idea how many poults the other hen had, as they were in cover when I saw them).
Having not seen a poult or a jake in two years (likely due to drought and poor breeding conditions) this was a bit of a good sign for me...
I saw a whole bunch of quail/pigeon sized poults today. They were in between those 2 birds size wise. Fairly small for so late. Last week Id seen 3-4 hens with some poults but only one or maybe two a piece, they were pheasant sized or larger.
At the horse farm down the road 2 times I've seen a flock w no poults n once w only one. That's amongst a flock of birds, second flock I saw today many miles from that horse farm also had zero poults . Little bit disturbing
This hen would eat every morning and evening at the base of our bird feeders all spring and vanished for about a month. She has just shown herself the last few days with 10 poults. She has taken a liking to a dusting spot under some planted sunflowers so was easy for a camera trap to take a poult census.
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This hen had 9 poults off the end of my driveway. Second time I saw her in 10 days and looks like she has kept them all.
Great news.
All The Way!
Educate me on what weather does and doesn't kill poults? Some say wet weather, some wet and cold weather. With our season being in April, first of May and our temps steadily rising into the 70-80 degree mark by then, we shouldn't lose any poults to cold weather. We do get the wet weather for spring green up at that time. If the hens hatch their eggs then predators should be our main enemy.