The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: perkhar on February 17, 2017, 08:18:21 pm
-
Are turkeys worth taking in and fattening for Xmas. How much feed and what to feed them if they were allowed to free range over as much land as they wanted. Would an old ruin be sufficient housing... Is there much work in them other than feeding or could I leave them to there own devices.
-
If you can get hold of a copy of Katie Thear's book on the subject it will give you the information you need. If you get them young they'll need the same care as chicks, including a heat lamp when small and a secure run until they're old enough to free range. A ruin would need a roof and be able to be made foxproof and somewhere you can lock them in at night.
-
And you need to have an end market for them, also to be prepared ahead of time for killing, plucking, hanging and dressing, especially if the weather is warm as you'll need facilities to keep them cool.
-
Turkeys are really easy. We always raise a few for Christmas and they taste fantastic compared with shop bought !
Sturdy housing a must as they are badger and fox favourites. They also eat a fair bit.
Ours never fly or go into trees but some breeds might.
-
I found the hatching rates of traditional type turkeys to be higher than my chickens, but also found the poults to be more sensitive and fragile. Mine were always falling over then unable to right themselves, so you need to be around and tending for the first week or so. In fact I kept mine in the house for the first 10 days.
My experiences of free ranging is - they are buggers for flying off over fences and then spending the entire time trying to get back again! Some even roosting on my byre roof! Also the more they range the tougher the leg meat. We did go through a lot of food and yes they take a lot longer to pluck than your average chicken.
I haven't been able to rear any commercial types as they aren't available where I live so they might be different. We reared Red Bourbons, Norfolk Blacks and crosses thereof.
-
Ours have proved more robust than chicks, eat less than a growing chicken, although drinking more water, and are kept in large game netting roofed runs. They are good fliers (and you don't want to get in the way of a 15kg flying Narragansett stag!)