Thursday, March 08, 2007

Will the early daylight savings time affect turkey breeding?


Will the early daylight savings time affect turkey breeding?


I could not believe I was seeing this question in an online forum. However, I decided to take a stab at it anyway.


Here in Kentucky, I suspect those old birds are probably looking forward to it for at least a couple good reasons. For one, you don't want to be all groggy and all, still trying to adjust to the time change on opening day. For another, you're losing an hour earlier in the year. That means you can make it up before the hens get really excited. That nets out to an extra hour of primetime whoopie for the gobblers.

For the jakes, they probably are not going to notice a difference. They haven't been through a Spring time change before. However, the hens are suddenly going to have to adjust to gobbling getting started a whole hour earlier in the morning. That means they got to get on with their yelping and flying down and such earlier too. The hens may be the hardest hit of all. You've also got to think about the Owls-- is anyone cluing them in or are the turkeys just going to suprise them on Sunday morning by gobbling before the owls have had a chance to wake them up? That could lead to some real problems. I'm not sure the owls are emotionally up to having the tables turned on them like that.

The biggest thing I see out of this is what happens in Yute season. Now all of a sudden you've got the kiddies going out a whole hour earlier to hunt their season. I suspect there's going to be a lot of snoring in the blinds come opening morning. How are the turkeys going to react to all that snoring. I have to poke my kids with a stick to keep them awake as it is.

These all are issues I bet nobody really thought out yet.

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