Getting Started With Turkeys

We bought twelve, day-old turkeys back in May. They are five weeks old. We are raising them for meat. We have raised chickens for meat for several years, but not turkeys. So this is something new for us.

One turkey will go to our good neighbor who lets us use some of his land (at no charge) for our agrarian pursuits. We may barter one or two birds with friends who raise beef. We’ve done this, pound for pound, with our chickens in the past. We hope to have land to raise a beef or two someday. But we’re doing what we can with what little we have now.

I’ve heard that turkeys are harder to raise than chickens because they are more stupid. Being more stupid than a chicken is really stupid. Now, I’ll bet there are people out there who love chickens and will assert that chickens are actually very intelligent animals. Well, I happen to enjoy and appreciate chickens myself, but I maintain that they are still stupid. Or, to put it more nicely, how about this: they are “brain deficient.” It’s a proven fact that chickens don’t have a brain in their head.

As evidence of this fact, I present the famous Wyandotte rooster, Mike, of Fruita, Colorado.If you haven’t yet heard the story of Mike the headless chicken, prepare to be amazed.

Back in 1945, Mike’s owner, a farmer named Lloyd Olsen, decided to make a meal of Mike. He chopped his head off in the back yard. The bird didn’t die. It walked around like it still had a head. What would you do if you had a headless chicken strutting around your barnyard?

Yes, Mr. Olsen took the bird on tour. He charged people a quarter to see his famous chicken. He made a lot of money off that bird. Mike even made it into Life magazine. He lived for 18 months without his head before accidentally dying in a hotel room in Phoenix. You can learn more about Mike the headless chicken here.

Anyway, I can tell you that young turkeys have a different “personality” than young chickens. For one thing, they are more curious, and stupid. Did I mention that turkeys are stupid?

When we first got the 12 chicks, I put them in my Whizbang Garden Cart Turkey Brooder. That sufficed for a week before they started jumping over the edge of the cart.

The top edge of the cart is about 29” off the ground (or, in this instance, the floor of my shop). The turkey chicks were about 5” high at the time. So they were jumping over the edge and falling a distance six time their height. That’s the equivalent of you or me jumping off a three-story building. Of course, turkeys have wings and we don’t. But at a week old, their wings don’t work very well. They do not land very gracefully. The point is, it’s a stupid thing to do, especially more than once. Somehow, though, they survived.

After a week, I moved the ugly little darlings to a larger enclosure with taller sides inside my shop. We fed them turkey chick starter and made sure they had clean water at all times. In addition to that, we made a point, right from the start, of feeding them comfrey leaves. I was surprised that, at two days old, they eagerly took to the green leaves (I’ll admit, this was an indication of some intelligence on their part).

At first, we cut the leaves into little slivers with scissors. As the birds have grown, I’ve cut the leaves larger. Now that they are out in a chicken tractor, I take whole stalks of comfrey and start at the stalk end cutting chunks off with pruning shears. I switch to scissors when I get to the leafy top. I do this comfrey feeding twice a day and the turkeys swarm over the forage like feathered pigs, gobbling it all down.

And speaking of pigs, we adopted a pig-raising technique from Northern Farmer, Tom Scepaniak. In his Plain Talk interview with Rick Saenz. Tom tells how he introduces soil to newborn piglets in the barn. They can smell it, play with it, and even eat it.

With that thought in mind, I used a shovel to chop out a circle of sod, with long grass and weeds on the top, and I put it in the brooder with the turkeys. They were too yound and weak to peck and eat the greens but they had a lot of fun trying. Every day, I put in a fresh piece of sod and it was a big attraction to the little critters.

When the time came to put them out on “pasture” (otherwise known as our lawn, as seen in the beginning photo) the turkeys were no stranger to the greens and have become good grass eaters.

I’m not an expert on raising turkeys but I’m learning. And, so far, I’m doing pretty good at it. All twelve turkeys are healthy and growing. I really do think comfrey leaves and sod have contributed significantly to this success. It’s something to keep in mind the next time you get some turkey chicks.

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P.S. If you have not yet read my other poultry-related essays, I invite you to do so. Here are the links...

Turkeys in Tractors & Comfrey For Feed

Backyard Poultry Processing With My 11-year-Old Son

My Whizbang Plucker Story

Frequently Asked Questions About The Whizbang Plucker

Introducing My Deluxe Homemade Chicken Scalder

Talkin’ Bout My Chicken Tractor

Talkin' Bout My Chicken Tractor (Part 2)

FREE Chicken Feed

The Next Best Thing To A Whizbang Chicken Plucker

My Chicken Plucker Parts Business

The Best Place to Buy Plucker Fingers