Raising Turkeys - Part 1

Fall and early winter is the perfect time to start thinking about raising turkeys.  A number of good heritage farms begin taking orders for the spring hatch starting in November, while major hatcheries may wait until after January 1st.  Turkey sales often book up fairly early, so be sure to get your order in while the choices are still good.

Raising turkeys is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those unwilling to wait.  Turkey rearing and breeding take time, dedication and research!

Since there is so much information to cover about these fantastic birds, I’m going to split it up into several parts.

• Part 1: Things to know about raising turkeys, compared to chickens
• Part 2:  Turkey breeds 
• Part 3:  Raising Poults to Adults
• Part 4:  Breeding turkeys

I hope you enjoy this series of articles!  Please feel free to send me an email or post questions.

Part 1:  Things to know about raising turkeys, compared to chickens

Of all the poultry I have raised, turkeys are by far my favorite.  These large birds are as friendly as they are beautiful and a great addition to any farm or homestead.

If you talk to enough poultry people you'll hear the full gamut of turkey horror stories - aggressive toms, birds so dumb they'll drown in the rain, poults starving to death with a full feeder, and on and on it goes.  I'm here to tell you though, that with a little understanding, you can be successful with turkeys.

Like all livestock, the key to turkey raising is always in selecting the right breeds (see part 2 of this series), and raising your birds correctly (see part 3 of this series).

The first thing to understand is that turkeys are a much bigger investment than most of their chicken counterparts, and that all parts of the turkey raising process is slower.  Turkeys will require a higher protein feed until they are about 6 months, at which time they can be moved out to sheltered pasture or into a turkey house and their feed adjusted accordingly.

When it comes to butchering, unlike the 12-16 weeks it takes to mature a young cockerel for eating, turkeys will require approximately 26 weeks (6ish months).  If keeping birds to breed, breeding cannot take place until 8-10 months of age, and is seasonal, in comparison to the nearly year round nature of chickens.

Naturally, turkeys will require more feed, more water, and much sturdier fencing.  They will also do best if raised away from chickens, who may be carriers of the dreaded blackhead disease that is a certain death sentence for turkeys.

Please read the other parts of this series for more in depth information.

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.