Turkey Troubles

Well, we have certainly learned quite a bit about raising turkeys this year. You can read as many books as you’d like, but the experience of actually doing it is what will drive home the most valuable lessons – as with anything, really. Here’s some of what having this flock of turkeys has taught us so far:

1. Turkeys are expensive when you want heritage breeds. We have a mix of Bourbon Reds, Standard Bronze, Blue Slate, and Chocolate breeds. These will cost you significantly more than the Broad Breasted Whites – the standard production breed for sale in supermarkets. In fact, about double or triple the cost just to get started, depending on where you obtain your poults. This is most painfully driven home if you lose any of those babies – which we did in the first couple of weeks. Not only are you saddened by the loss of life, but ouch, that hurts the pocketbook, too. We started with 31 and we are down to 26. And they make it difficult to keep them safe and sound, because…
2. Turkeys (heritage breeds) can fly pretty darn well, despite what you saw on WKRP In Cincinnati so many years ago. (Those birds were Broad Breasted Whites.) We’ve been using hog panels from TSC all latched together with clips to form a portable yard. However, they have been easily flying out of the portable yard and becoming more bold in their roaming around our property. This is a problem, because there are plenty of predators who would love to make a meal out of them. We finally had to start keeping them in their portable tractor-coop and not letting them out a few days ago, after an incident in which all but two birds flew the coop and hadn’t returned by sundown. We had to round them up individually and get them back to their coop. Don’t worry, though – there’s plenty of space for them in there, and really, that’s how many farms raise theirs – right inside the protective shelter that is moved around regularly to provide them with fresh pasture. We aren’t sure how we will proceed for the remaining months until slaughter, but for now, we’re keeping them on grass, but safely within their shelter. Some articles recommend electrified poultry netting to provide yard space. However, we’ve watched these turkeys gain altitude so quickly (and I realize how crazy that sounds, but it’s true), we’re not sure that they would remain contained within that type of yard, either. Given the cost and trouble of implementing that kind of a yard, and the fact that we’ve already spent quite a bit of money on the hog panels currently in place – we are proceeding with scrutiny.
3. We have a lot of Toms (Males)! I was personally surprised at how many males we have. You can only order straight run turkeys from the hatchery, so it’s not as though we had any choice in this matter.  That’s fine, for the most part, because we are raising these birds primarily for meat, after all, and the Toms get bigger than the hens. But wow! That’s a lot of posturing and gobbling! Hopefully we do not have the same kinds of issues with male aggression that we see in our duck and chicken flocks – we don’t want these boys injuring the minority of hens. They go to slaughter right before Thanksgiving – but sexual maturity will arrive around August-September, and that could lead to a lot of fights amongst the males and a lot of….action…for the females. Which could lead to the need to keep them separated until slaughter, and that means building more housing. I really hope we don’t have to do that, but it could be another expense of money and time. We are planning to keep a breeding pair or two for ourselves through the winter, so maybe the housing we build for them will serve as a home for the ladies if things get too chaotic. Of course, that still leaves for the possibility of the boys roughing each other up. I guess time will tell.
4. Turkeys are kind of clever, but will try your patience. I guess it’s true of many animals. We do enjoy how “interactive” turkeys are with us. They are quite curious about who you are and what you are doing. And more importantly, what kind of food you’ve brought to them! They are also quite cooperative when we move the coop – they move along in the direction we are headed and unlike chickens or ducks, nobody gets themselves stuck under the wall of the structure as it moves along. But when they decide that they want to be somewhere that you don’t want them, they can be real pistols about being herded or even carried back to safety.

So, those are some of the things we’ve learned so far, and I’m sure there will be more as we move through the season. Have you raised heritage turkeys? What kinds of lessons did you carry away from the experience?

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