Wild Turkeys
Zoo Animals
Wild Turkeys
Meleagris gallopavo
This large ground dwelling bird is South Carolina’s official State Wild Game Bird. There are five subspecies of
the wild turkey in North America, the eastern wild turkey is the subspecies found in South Carolina. The wild turkey is one of the largest birds in North America; an adult male can grow to four feet long from the beak to
the tail. The males have a dark, iridescent body while the female’s feather color is more drab. The flight feathers are black with brown stripes and are barred with white. Wild turkeys have between 5000 and 6000 feathers on the body.
The head and upper part of the neck are featherless. They have a red wattle which consists of the fleshy
lobes hanging down from the chin or throat. They have a wart-like projection of skin attached to the upper
part of the forehead that is called a caruncle (ca-run-cle). Both sexes have long powerful legs covered with scales and are born with a small button spur on the back of the leg. Most of the female’s spurs do not grow. The male’s spurs start growing pointy and curved shortly after birth, and they can grow up to about two inches long. Males also have “beards” which are tufts of feathers growing out of and hanging down from the chest. This beard can grow to an average of nine inches, and 10 to 20 percent of females also have beards.
The male turkeys are called gobblers (or toms), the females are called hens, and the young are called poults.
Wild turkeys have excellent vision during the daytime, but cannot see as well at night. They also have excellent hearing. They are powerful fliers, reaching speeds of up to 55 mph for short distances.
They like open areas for feeding, mating, and habitat. They use forested areas for cover to hide from predators and for roosting in trees at night. They must have a varied habitat that contains both open and covered areas to ensure survival. Habitats preferred by wild turkeys include mixed coniferous and deciduous forests.
Turkeys mate in the spring. The males will use strut zones during the mating season, which are places in the woods or a field where the male will strut, showing off and displaying himself. Each male will establish as many as six strut zones and visit them daily in a regular pattern. Courtship behavior patterns include strutting and gobbling by the males. Gobbling attracts the females to the males who then court the females by strutting or displaying. Wild turkeys are polygamous; therefore one male will attempt to mate with multiple females.
The females become secretive while they search for a nest site before they lay their eggs. The nests are shallow depressions in the ground constructed by the actions of scratching, squatting, and laying the eggs. The female will lay between 8 and 15 eggs over a two-week period, usually laying one egg per day. The female does not sit on the eggs until the last one is laid. Until that time, she covers the eggs with leaves. She will then incubate the eggs for 26-28 days, moving around about once an hour to turn the eggs.
After the eggs hatch, the poults are fully dry, coordinated, and ready to follow their mother away from the nest within 12-24 hours. By the end of the poult’s second week, they are able to fly short distances, and in the third week they can roost in low trees with their mother. At 14 weeks, of age the male and female poults are distinguishable by body size and plumage.
Originally, wild turkeys were very abundant in Mexico and in all parts of the United States. The early European settlers over-harvested the wild turkey and the bird was hunted almost to extinction but is making a marked comeback due to protection, restocking programs, and the return of the mature forests favored by this bird.
