Facts You Probably Know About The Ocellated Turkey

By Virginia Clark


Turkey, like many other animals also has a variety of species. Turkey becomes the talk of the day especially days before thanksgiving. It is the main meal in every American home on this special day. Farmers take it up on themselves to feed all those turkeys as much as needed. The article talks about a species of turkey known as an ocellated turkey.

The turkeys all have blue heads with red nodules coming out of them. The turkeys we rare are usually red-heads. They are the most colorful of all the bird species as one might have a variety of colors. They are capable of growing up to 1.2 meters in length when healthy. The males have spurs of up to 4 cm emerging from their legs which they use to fight.

Their diet is not that much different from the birds we see at the farm. They are omnivorous in nature. This means like us humans they feed on both meat and vegetables. They eat seeds, berries, leaves insects among a lot of other stuff. The male is known as the gobble while the female is known as a hen. The male gobbles and struts around the hen during mating season to attract it.

The birds are native to Central America and in Mexico in places such as Belize and Guatemala. Unfortunately, in the recent past, their numbers have gone down a great deal. This because of three main reasons. Humans kill them for food; humans also destroy their habitat for their own advancement. Predators such as raccoons and Jaguars are the main contributor.

If you ask randomly, people will tell you that bird to them is a large chicken. Evolution of over 45million years ago shows that the only relationship between bird and chicken is that they are birds. In the early 1900s, these turkeys were hunted and almost became extinct. A program was introduced that helped in their conservation.

There are about six subspecies of the wild turkey. The eastern wild bird is found on the eastern side of the US and even extend into Canada. Some refer to them as the forest turkey. They happen to the most dominant of all the species. They have gotten to a whopping 5 million in number which is a huge number of birds.

There is a set of modified feathers on the breast of the male which is popularly referred to like the beard. It is however absent in the females. Both male and female have snoods. They are more obvious in the males. Females have been known to prefer males with longer snoods. These are also in the determination of a winner after a fight.

These birds have the opinion of either walking or running. They usually prefer to run. Their speed stands at 25miles per hour while running. In flight, they cover 55 miles within one hour. You can actually be able the difference between a male and a female not only by physical appearance but also by the way their droppings look. The males are spiral while the females are J shaped.

A collection of related males can go look for females together, but only one have the chance to mate with an individual female. The incubation period for the eggs is 28days.




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