Turkeys

The Care & Keeping

As far as the most popular breeds, there are the Bourbon Red, Royal Palm, Standard Bronze, Black Spanish, and the Eastern Wild and Narragansett types of turkeys. Of course the most popular breeds are used for your Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with those being the Broad Breasted White and Broad Breasted Bronze. These particular breeds cannot breed naturally due to their great weight and breast size. They must be artificially inseminated.

Breeding season starts in February and lasts through November. They can begin breeding at 7 months of age. One tom (male) can fertilize up to ten hens (females) and one mating can produce up to 2 weeks of fertile eggs. Their eggs are large and light brown in color with specks on them. Turkey eggs take 28 days to hatch.

The young, poults as they are called, are a bit of a challenge to raise compared to chickens or ducks. They tend to sit and look up at you rather than look down for food. Placing a new baby chick in with them will help in the teaching. A really good idea is to keep dipping their little beaks in the food and water. Using a small lid off the water dish, I like to place colored marbles, especially red and green ones on top of the lid. I've found that this helps. Do not use a regular water dish as they are very awkward and tend to fall over easily and will drown. If they do not take to food right away sometimes I will hand feed them using a small syringe filled with mixed food and water, adding a touch of sugar works best for me. Take care not stuff it down their throats, just one drop at a time until they are used to it. By squirting the syringe in the dish, they seem to learn easier that way and you just may get a night's sleep when they learn.

The poults must be kept warm. I use the red bulbs, as the white bulbs tend to keep them up all night. Red is more soothing and they can still sleep. If they happen to get wet, you do not have much time as you can lose them fast. I've wrapped them in towels and used a hair dryer set at a low temperature to dry them. A cold chill or draft will also kill them.

If you are raising turkeys like the Broad Breasted White or Bronze for meat, I have noticed compared to my other breeds, that they tend to pick more. If they do start fighting, the best thing I have found to work is using a mirror. It doesn't have to be a fancy one, any one will do. I needed to use this as a diversion when I raised 50 Broad Breasted White. They started fighting out of boredom. By placing the mirror in the pen, I have found that they are very vain and love to look at themselves. Of course I think they are beautiful. I know some people do not think this way but I do. The mirror helps as they will peck at their own reflection instead of each other and save on losing poults. I have found that the rare breeds I have do not behave in this manner. I am not sure why the White and Bronze tend to do this, but the mirror will help in this situation.

I start the poults with medicated chick grower crumbles. I do not use pellets until they are older. At the right time, I switch over to a good protein turkey grower and they do so love cracked corn too! When I hand raise them like this they tend to be very friendly. Even my older turkeys know me still as their Mom. The best part of my day is to have them all come running at me at once, chirping and gobbling away for me to hand out treats. They tend to intimidate visitors by seeing a large group of turkeys running at you. I just tell the visitors that they are happy to see their Mom.

I am a proud breeder of Royal Palms, Black Spanish, and Standard Bronze (this type can breed naturally). I also breed Rio Grande and New Jersey Buff. I have two very heavy Broad Breasted White that will not ever have to worry about seeing a dinner table. I plan on getting a Bourbon Red tom soon so I can finally create my Chocolate turkeys (Bourbon Red x Black Spanish).

I hope you enjoyed reading my article. As you can tell I sure do love my turkeys and look forward to this year's hatching season.

Written for the Chicken Chronicles©2003

By Bobbie

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