If you have raised meat chickens, you can raise turkeys! They take a little longer to get to butcher weight but they also grow to 15 to 24 pounds of delicious turkey meat.
Ordering your turkey poults
We actually recommend you start your turkeys at the same time as your meat birds. The turkey poults will follow the meat chicks to the water and feed therefore this helps them learn faster.
We start 5 turkey poults with our 25 meat chicks every spring, ordering from the same hatchery and they come in the same perforated box. Turkey poults have a little bump on their beaks. This is how to tell them apart the first time you see the little puffballs. After a week it is easier as they grow much faster than the chickens.
Feed
We order turkey starter and use it for both the chickens and the turkeys for the first 4 weeks. It is higher in protein as they need it for faster growth but it doesn’t bother the chickens. Always have fresh water with a splash of apple cider in with them too.
Brooder
The brooder can be anywhere like a barn, shed or garage with electricity that can be used to hold the baby turkeys. Some people use a tote container or old kiddie pool. We use a stall in our barn that we have sectioned off with some fencing and made a circle out of cardboard and hay bales.
We hang a heat lamp from the ceiling and use some insulated boards to cover the top.
Keep the brooder at 95 degrees Fahrenheit for the first week and lower it by 5 degrees each week. You will be able to tell if they are warm enough by how they move about in the brooder. If they stay huddled under the lamp they are too cold so lower it. If they are pushed to the edge of the brooder then raise the lamp a few inches. When the poults are content to go to the food and water and aren’t peeping loudly they are good to go.
Bedding
We use pine shavings 4 inches thick then cover that with paper towels for the first week. this keeps them from eating the shaving as well as allowing them to walk around easily. I lay fresh towels down twice a day, morning and night and that keeps them pretty clean and dry.
Containment
After a few weeks, the turkeys will be about double the size of the chicks. They also like to hop around a lot and flap their wings trying to fly. They can usually hop right over a two-foot barrier. If you are not careful they can hop right out and not be smart enough to hop back it and can become chilled and die. We make our brooder bigger after 2 weeks and it’s enclosed with 3-foot walls and covered with chicken wire or a lid of some type to keep them inside.
Moving them to their own house
At 4 weeks the poults have feathered out and can be moved to their own house. We have kept them in tractors with the meat chickens but find they do better on their own. Our turkey area is about 40 by 15 feet pasture with a 4 x 8-foot house. This house is not insulated and is only enclosed with boards around the bottom 2 feet and has hardware cloth around the top 6 feet. It has a slanted roof to protect them from the weather. By now it’s the heat of summer so they don’t have the cold weather to worry about.
The fencing surrounding them is about 4 feet high chicken wire. The turkeys come outside every day to enjoy the grass and bugs and go back into the house at night for safety. Sometimes the females will fly upon the fence but usually, they won’t fly far if they come down on the wrong side. You will find them cuddled up on the wrong side of the fence with the other turkeys. The males tend to be too heavy to fly at all.
Feed and water
Their feed pans are filled with turkey grower feed every morning and they will eat grass and bugs also during the day. We put out a bucket of clean fresh water 2 times a day. They will go in and out of the house for shade or to get out of the rain.
Processing or harvesting
Turkeys take about 18 weeks to grow to butcher weight, therefore we call our processors early on after we order the poults to set our 18-week date. We use med-size dog crates to transport the turkeys to the processors. Our pickup truck with a covered back and open windows is used to drop the turkeys off in the morning. We come back the following day for 5 frozen vacuum-packed turkeys with weights of 15 to 24 pounds.
Who doesn’t want a Christmas turkey in their freezer? Let me know if you will be adding turkeys to your hobby farm.