Turkeys and chickens together

We have a mixed flock too. Turkeys and chickens free range but at night go to separate coops.


My Bourbon tom fights with one of the game rooster, you can hear the ruckus when they fight. In one occasions I saw the little turkeys follow the lead of the tom and encircle the rooster so I had to stop the fighting or the rooster would flog the crap of the little ones.

I have raised turkeys with chickens, and the turkeys will kill chickens, I had a young rooster get his brains pecked out by young toms, mine mingle, but the turkeys always show aggression to the chickens and the chickens leave when the turkeys are out, I had a banty chicken raise some turkeys, big mistake, they think they are chickens, they are so much bigger and stronger, I don't recommend it. I think you need more roosters for look outs, and more places like shrubs, and other things to hide under. These can help deter hawks

feedman77 said:

As far as picking on the older hens I'm guessing that it is a pecking order situation. The chicks they were raised with probably had that sorted out early. With the older hens they are trying to determine there place in the order.

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I think you might be right about this. I kept both of my five month old poults locked up in a small pen for two days. Each morning I gave them a trial to see if they would behave with the chickens, and the fighting started, so into the pen they went. They did not like the pen. They paced back and forth anxiously all day long. On the third morning, there was no fighting, so I let them stay out. I did notice that one of the poults got into bit of a stand off later in the day with each of the two hens involved, and both of those incidents ended with turkey and chicken cooling off and walking away from each other. The other poult watched, but didn't join in. It seems that they settled their pecking order without any further trouble, and now for the rest of the week everything has been fine again. I might add that they had been co-mingling with the older hens for months before this issue cropped up.

So I guess what I can expect to happen is that when my youngest batch of chickens + poult gets old enough to mingle with the main flock, there might be some more pecking order issues. Hopefully they will get resolved with a minimum of violence. At least I know to supervise them in the beginning until I see how they get along.

We have our four BBW turkeys, almost 3 months old now, with our 5 chickens. They get along pretty well, one chicken will pick on the turkeys and even though they are double, almost triple the chickens size they just run away from them. The turkeys will go into the chickens coop (they have separate houses) and just lay in the nesting boxes with a laying chicken or on the floor. They are so funny. So far no problems with aggressive behavior but we'll see what happens as they get older and their hormones get going... We did try to include our 4 Rouen ducks (gotten at the same time at the turkeys) but the turkeys kept kicking them so the ducks are now in the dogs yard

Hi guys I have a 3 month old Tom and hen together in the same run with 6 chicken hens. everybody was getting along perfectly until yesterday when my Tom begin hovering over one of my favorite chicken stomped on her held her down and has been picking at her head so she bled. I saved her just in time. This morning when I let her out of the coop both the male and female began pecking at her. Now I can't keep them all together. Why is this all of a sudden happening? They sleep in separate quarters in a 20 by 20 foot 6 foot high chain link fence with netting on top.

GhostGirlShannon said:

Hi guys I have a 3 month old Tom and hen together in the same run with 6 chicken hens. everybody was getting along perfectly until yesterday when my Tom begin hovering over one of my favorite chicken stomped on her held her down and has been picking at her head so she bled. I saved her just in time. This morning when I let her out of the coop both the male and female began pecking at her. Now I can't keep them all together. Why is this all of a sudden happening? They sleep in separate quarters in a 20 by 20 foot 6 foot high chain link fence with netting on top.

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It is happening because your turkeys are growing up. It may have started as a pecking order/dominance thing. What may seem fine as room for chickens is not fine for turkeys. Turkeys need much more space than do chickens.

R2elk said:

It is happening because your turkeys are growing up. It may have started as a pecking order/dominance thing. What may seem fine as room for chickens is not fine for turkeys. Turkeys need much more space than do chickens.

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Do you think allowing them out of the run during the day will help?? I'll do anything for my favorite chicken

GhostGirlShannon said:

Do you think allowing them out of the run during the day will help?? I'll do anything for my favorite chicken

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It will help the turkeys but it is not going to cure your turkey/chicken problems. The only thing that will cure that problem is by getting rid of those turkeys. Now that they have learned what they can do to the chickens and how much fun (in their minds) it is, they are not going to stop.