rain, wind and freezing weather, turkeys refuse to shelter

I have 6 turkeys (three toms three hens) all from last year.....they've always slept outside on the fence posts in the field. we built them a nice shelter with roosts but they've always slept outside.

thats been no problem until recently, its been raining hard in the day and freezing hard at night, every night the turkeys sit through the freeze and wake up in the mornings with there wet feathers frozen stiff. im guessing this cannot be healthy at all...but how do i convince the turkeys to use the shelter? they know its there.....they use it when the sun is blaring for shade.....but not now?

Welcome to the world of turkeys! People new to turkeys always ask what kind of shelter do they need to build and I always say "not too nice". A turkey is gonna do what it wants!

Same here ! Liveing in Canada and being the winter I would have thought that They would go into the coop ? NOT ! One has a tree that it prefers to roost in and the others sit on the fence rail ? Once in a while two hens will join the chickens in the coop ..................strange birds ?

I even have an old chicken house that is 100 yards long and the eat in there and hang out there in the shade in this hot Texas sun. It is full from one end to the other with nice rafters. Do you think the turkeys or guineas roost there???? Heck no, they will head back outside before dark to hit the trees and outside pens!

Unless you are around, just before they go to roost, to herd them to the shelter, then they'll probably ignore the digs. If you are around and can get them to the authorized roosts, please post up how much time it takes to train the adults. Think turks `feel' safer in the open, though that isn't always the case.

We trained our first bunch, from poults on, to use their shed roosts and, now, three generations on, the adult turks take care of the conditioning. We have plenty of trees/chimney/etc. that they'll hang out in before dark (when out ranging they'll exercise their wings) but they always march off to the run/shed at sundown. Too many preds, here, to allow them to do otherwise.

Third gen. (third hatch of year - July) being `schooled' (8/11):


Night before last (the RP jenny is above on rafter out of shot):


On the old BYC, before we got the turks, I read the experience of a member in Scotland that included his having to free turkeys from tree, following an ice storm, by wrapping them in hot, wet, towels to melt them off their roost.
During the ice storms, that we sometimes get to enjoy, I only want to have to worry about the trees hanging over the house giving way and crushing the roof - not hot wrapping turkeys...

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