Can turkeys be housed with chickens, ducks and geese?

I had about 6 turkeys and all but two have died in the last couple of months. I have a ton of chickens, some ducks, and 3 geese could they have caused the turkeys to die? The first four I bought were young poults and the last two were adults. One of the adults died and three of the young poults died. What should I do?

Well the EXPERTS say no you shouldnt, but tons of people do.
I have always had my chickens and turkeys in pens beside each other, but never have i run them together.
I have also had a few turkeys die this year, but it wasnt because the were beside the chickens. My ducks free range through the day along with a few chickens and then go in at night. The ducks hang out with the turkeys, peafow, chickens, cat, and my 2 pit bulls, so I doubt they have any effect on them either.
There is a huge breeder not far from me that houses everything she has together and dont have problems.
Alot has to do with making sure the birds are all heathy and disease free too.

Im no expert, just my 2 cents

jrsqlc is right. the experts say not to do it because of possible disease transmission. with that said, i have turkeys and they are housed with chickens, ducks AND geese. i have not had any problems. i only had 1 turkey poult that died but i don't think that it was any type of disease transmission from one animal to another. it was just his time to go.

what was the reason your turkeys died? with all of those turkeys dieing and if you don't know, then i would NOT house them together. there may be some type of disease that your turkeys have and you don't want to spread that to the rest of your flock. I guess it's an individual case by case decision. i house them all together because it works for me. but you may want to take a look at that being as though you have a lot of turkey deaths. the deaths warrant some type of questioning as to what is going on with those turkeys. don't risk housing them all together. if you are set up where you can keep them separated then try to do that.

im sure that i wasn't any help because i have said that i house my turkeys with my flock and then come back around seconds later and tell you not to do it. you may have to make that decision for yourself.

Thanks for the help.

I am building a new facility for all of my birds at the moment and was planning to build seperate pens, but the process is moving very slowly. Right now I have a large building where I house all of my birds. The building is about 30 feet long and about 24 feet wide. I have to clean it almost every day because of all of the birds. I hope I am not over crowding. The poults looked disease free until about a month after I brought them homethen they started to get very lethargic and would sleep most of the day. The poults were fine for about a month and then all of the sudden their health started to worsen. I don't know if the chickens passed along some sort of disease or if they were sick to begin with. I noticed that there was some blood in the manure a few days before they died.

The adult on the other hand looked fine and then all of a sudden she dropped dead. I did notice some yellow in her manure, very different from the young poults. I have no idea what is going on, it seems as though turkeys and me were never meant to be!

If anyone else has some input I would love to hear it.

Thanks,

Quote:
Just curious as to which "EXPERTS" say that? We have raised them together for many years.

Steve

Well i have read it on a few bags of feed. My local dealer is a 40+ year owner and operator of a feed company and a very educated man, he says Blackheads will and do kill turkeys! And chickens are a host or carrier of blackheads! This is why they shouldnt be housed together.
I have even heard that no matter how big your property, if they are both housed, the blackheads can be transmitted.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=36461
Great post to read!!

http://www.kalmbachfeeds.com
My dealers website:

Steve: I dont mean to argue with you as I have also raised them together for years!

What are blackheads exactly and do you think mine had the characteristics of it just before they died?

Histomoniasis... here is the info in the Merck Vet Manual. http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/203000.htm

Blackhead has to be present in the soil for your birds to be affected. Everybody that does a cut and paste to anouther site doesn't say that, so do some research and look deeper. It doesn't just appear "poof" out of the blue. Chickens can carry it yes, as can wild birds. Sooo if your are really worried you have to have total isolation and keep your birds in a "bubble"

Steve

Thanks for the help everyone. My chickens don't show any signs of sickness, so I am hoping it is not blackhead. Would my chickens start to die from or does it just kill turkeys? I also lock all of my birds up at night could this foster the sickness?

I do have one more question though, are some foods poisonous to turkeys?

The reason I am asking this question is because I have some apple trees by my house and some of the apples that fall from the trees make their way to the bird barn, do you think this may be a problem? I also feed my birds watermelon, leftover fruit, vegitables, spaghetti and a few other things.

If you don't think the food is the problem then, I might just have to work on a place for my last two turkeys. I do have an old dog kennel that needs some work, but for my birds sake it probably is worth the time.

Thanks for all the help, I really do appriciate your input.