Raising Turkeys Near Chickens?

There's a lot of talk on the Internet and in books about how you cannot raise turkeys anywhere near chickens.  I'm sure that if you live in an area that has a high run of blackhead disease that may be true, but over the years I have never had a case of it.

To start with, I think there are two main things you need to be mindful of - where you got your birds, and how you manage your flocks.

When I was a teenager, my mom raised bronze and white turkeys in with her chickens.  They ate together, drank together, and roosted in trees together.  We had poults hatch and they lived in the same environment with no dreaded blackhead.

Two years ago when I started my own flock, I listened to all the hysteria.  Don't let poults contact the ground until they are three or four months, don't let them around chickens, disinfect all your equipment weekly, blah blah blah.  I listened... and promptly disregarded it all.

I disinfect my brooder and all equipment before the birds arrive, but other than a weekly scrub that equipment doesn't get disinfected again until it's ready to be used by the next batch. 

My turkey poults get moved outside at about six weeks.  Honestly, by the time they hit that age, you'll be surprised at how big of a brooder you'll need! They go out into a mobile pen so that they can be protected but still have access to grasses and bugs.  The mobile pens run the same ground as the chicken mobile pens.  In fact, one of my pens is an 8'x12' divided into two 8'x6' areas.  Right now, one side is chickens and the other is turkeys.  They've been out there for months and everyone is just fine!

Now then, my birds came from hatchery stock, and everyone arrives here as day olds or are farm hatched.  We are careful not to let other people enter our poultry areas (with few exceptions), and we never bring in new adult birds.

We keep our pens clean, and move our mobile pens around often enough that they are always in a clean environment. 

I'm not saying that we'll never have a case, I'm just proposing that maybe a little practical experience might be more in order than complete paranoia.