Accidently hit a turkey nest bush hogging. If I were too put the eggs under a setting chicken hen will they hatch? If they were to hatch, would the poults eventually be able to survive in the wild, and last is there anything illegal about doing that?

You might want to contact the local conservation office to play it safe. If you end up raising them yourself keep us updated. I want to know how they do.

Just try it, if you don’t have an incubator… done bummed the meat up, don’t see what it will hurt. At least your trying..

Just put them under the chicken. They'll hatch and follow her around.

Yes they’ll hatch, but they’ll more than likely die. It is illegal JFYI.

It will work. Buddy of mine hatched a gobbler under a chicken. As far as survival it will be fine as long as it hangs around as a wild animal it will probably be dead in short order.

Incubator be best wild turkeys can catch a lot of stuff from chickens

Aint a snowball's chance in hell I'd call them.. The first thing them crooks would do is jump in their truck and come trump up a reason to give you a ticket even if you havent actually touched the egg yet

I know a guy who did it…many times…and he was successful…this was a long time ago. He kept a breeding set of wild birds so he always had eggs to hatch…byned they is turkeys in the places he released..and they wudnt before…but he went above and beyond anybody in our state ever did to make sure the release was successful…an he turned loose UHBUNCHA TURKEYS…I still know where their old roost tree is…and like all wild birds they all moved where the better habitat was..and are still there today.

pickle them suckers..

I hit some last year. Killed the hen. 4 eggs didn’t break. Call the Game wardens office explained what happened. Lady on the phone could not say keep them or throw them out. The laws/rules she found were keeping live wild birds. So being hatched at your barn they are called wild turkeys but their tame. She stated it’s a federal bird and once hatch the rule would/could change. Some things probably should not be posted in public.

do not call them....

They are not a migratory bird so the feds have absolutely no authority over turkeys. She likely don’t know what she’s talking about. Half the WFF staff still think you can’t have more than 3 shells in a shotgun in turkey season. I know that for a fact because I’ve had to correct them when they misinformed participants at a hunting workshop. They have no idea.

So I’m told you can hatch them in an incubator. Some will die just as if you were trying to raise bitties. The fella that was telling me about it also had yard chickens. He said as the turkeys got older they would range much further than the yard birds….after they reached around a year old he said they would be gone for several days at a time and as time passed they would stay gone longer and longer. The old fella is gone now…..I sure miss him.

Makes one wonder if that introduced disease to wild flocks

As a boy growing up there were no turkeys anywhere near us except tame turkeys. My dad always had chickens and he used Banny Chickens to hatch out turkeys we would sell when they were grown. Daddy would just move the turkey eggs and put them under a sitting Banny Hen. Those little hens would raise the turkeys and they never knew the difference as to what they were. We lived on a farm and the turkeys freely ranged where they wanted to. We probably raised at least a thousand over those decades.

There is no telling how many turkeys we sold to hunters who were supposed to be turkey hunting in southern Alabama but never made the trip!

I know a dude who had a tame turkey and over fed it and it got so fat that both its legs broke and it couldn't even walk anymore. Pathetic.

More than likely it was a double breasted bronze. Their life span is max 2 years they get huge quick