How to Raise Turkeys
Whether you're looking to supplement your income or provide a tasty home grown meal for the family, you'll profit either way raising turkeys. The benefits are widespread and include a built- in pest control service. Turkeys eat bugs, mosquitoes, ticks and flies. No matter what your reason is for raising turkeys, there are just a few things you need to know to raise the roost.
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Instructions
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Determine the breed of turkeys that you want to raise. For example Heritage Turkeys are the old standard turkey and are naturally bred and slow-growing but delicious. Large white or Broad Breasted Bronze produce a lot of meat quickly because their body was genetically altered in order to develop breast meat in large quantities.
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Purchase day old turkeys (poults) in the spring. They are not very expensive and easy to begin with. Be sure to select males and females for breeding purposes.
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Set up a brooding area. A children's plastic pool can work if it is lined with about one inch of wood shavings. Install two infrared heat lamps above the pool so the temperature is around 95 to 100 degrees. Once a week raise the lamps to reduce temperature by 5 degrees.
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Supply brooding area with one large food and water container per 25 birds. A good game bird food will have about 30 percent protein. Remove brooding pool after a couple of weeks and prepare for the next size.
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Create an 8- by 8-foot area to raise the turkeys for approximately four more weeks. Consider making a movable turkey roost to minimize manure build up. Just build it and move the roost with a tractor pull every other day to a fresh location. Mount a branch inside about 1 to 2 feet off the ground and watch for perching signs, which means they are ready to roost.
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Go outside and play. Once the turkeys are 6 weeks old and the temperature is above 75 degrees, they should go outdoors to take dirt baths and flap their wings freely. An area 75 by 75 feet can hold around a dozen turkeys. Use a poultry netting or woven wire field fence to keep predators away.
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Allow 8 week old turkeys to roam freely in pasture. Keep fresh food and water available. An average adult will eat about one pound of feed a day. It takes 3 1/4 pounds of feed to equal approximately 1 pound of live turkey weight.
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Tips & Warnings
Go natural and raise your turkeys without chemicals and hormones.
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Comments
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we are going to try the bourbon red turkey next. they are considered slow food and are heritage birds. more natural, not so much crossbreeding
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Angela Latta yeah i have checked quite a few...none of the symptoms seem to apply..what I have learned is that they have been bred to slaughter at 18 weeks, we let him go 26 weeks, it may have been old age but i suspect heart failure
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Have you gone on the backyard chicken forum, they have a lot of great info.. sorry about your loss!
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can anyone help? I have been raising two turkeys, one white one bronze. The white reached approximately 35 lbs, has access to plenty of food, and has approxiamtely 200 sq ft of outdoor space along with a very large indoor roost. Woke up this morning to find the white turkey dead and the bronze very upset. His head and mouth were wet/muddy. I did notice yesterday that he seemed to be drooling quite a bit. Please help as I do not want to repeat any possibel mistakes on my part. Thanks.
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mix your own feed, using a mixture of equal parts of whole corn, oats and sunflower seeds, with a dash of grit (necessary for digestion). The addition of sunflower seeds to the diet is very important, as it is a chicken's main source of calcium and is necessary for the formation of the eggshell
