The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: Nickyh on July 13, 2015, 05:16:05 pm
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About 4 weeks I hatched 6 Turkey chicks. They were fine and healthy but over the following few weeks they just keep dying. I am not new to this and I breed and raise lots of chickens, quail, pheasants and partridge all the time but I just can't do turkeys!!
We had exactly the same problem last year. They have red heat lamps (good temperatures), fed on chick crumb and look fine when I check them today but then tomorrow one or more will be dead. I watched one today, it was a good size but it just puts its head on the floor and wiggles its wings, unable to stand up.
What are we doing wrong? Any advice is much appreciated.
Thanks
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Cocci? are they on medicated feed?
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We were told to feed poults only on turkey crumbs with no added coccidiostat. What breed of turkey are they? Do you know if the parent stock were fed correctly? I, too, would suspect poults dying at that age to be succumbing to cocci, but there could also be an underlying problem that's making them susceptible. We always let our turkey hens brood eggs and we've not yet lost a poult.
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Thanks for the advice. I think the problem must be the food as opposed to the breed or genetics as we had the same problem last year from turkeys from a different place. I think our mistake was feeding them normal chick crumb. I will buy some turkey crumb ASAP. Still a bit confused though over whether it should be medicated or not as one reply said yes and the other said no.
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Whilst I have no experience of Turkeys Nickyh, I recall that they should not be fed medicated chick crumb containing ACS but rather should have dedicated Turkey crumb medicated to avoid 'blackhead'. They should not be on ground grazed by any other avian species either.
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I thought of blackhead too but I thought they would have to be older than 4 weeks.
Nicky, do any of your chickens sometimes produce pooh with a very yellow colour in it?
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Thanks for the advice. I think the problem must be the food as opposed to the breed or genetics as we had the same problem last year from turkeys from a different place. I think our mistake was feeding them normal chick crumb.
Nicky, I rear my turkeys every year on medicated chicken starter crumb without any problems.
Its lower protein so they just eat more and is therefore not as economical but it does the job.
I would certainly never try rearing turkeys on unmedicated crumbs.
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We had a similar experience last year, usual turkeys from the usual place just started dying at a rate of one or two a day. Only thing that stopped it for me was mucking out at least once a day preferably twice and disinfecting with jeyes. As soon as I started that regime the deaths started tailing off.