- Jun 14, 2014
- 29
- 5
- 24
Turkeys are definitely fun. My wife and I had some Bronze turkeys about 8 years ago and although they could not fly they did have leg problems. One of the toms we butchered weighed in at just over 50#'s butchered. We had these turkeys with chickens on 1/2 an acre. We really did not have problems with them other than they loved to fence fight with our bird dogs and sometimes gobbled too much considering the close quarters with our neighbors. I’m still surprised one of our dogs didn’t get a lucky grab on a turkey head through the woven fence.
Now we live on 9 acres completely fenced in with 4' high woven wire fence and decided to get some more turkeys, but wanted a heritage breed that could reproduce as well as walk....and not have problems like our bronze did. I was able to get one tom and three hens (Black Spanish) in January of 2014 (8 months old). They were friendly and would follow us around, but not so friendly we could pet them. They were lots of fun. However, they would jump the 4' high fence once in a while, so we trimmed one of their wings to prevent them from flying. This worked great! Later on we started getting about 2 eggs a day from the three hens in March and one of the hens went broody and set on her eggs (at last look at about 8 under her).
Then.....one morning, my wife called me from work panicked and stated one of the turkeys was dead/half eaten and the other three were missing. There was a light powdering of snow and after tracking the drag marks that evening we could see where something (a fox? tracks were mostly melted/gone) had drug the other three turkeys to our fence edges, before finding a small hole under the fence, where they/it were able to tug them under the fence to never be seen again. In addition, all the eggs had been eaten, without a shell to be found. Now we think it was a fox, as we had seen them around at times, but I just have a hard time believing that one fox would take 3 full grown turkeys and eat another on one night!? I do know dogs cannot get into our pasture and we have never had them in there before. I mean the hole they were drug under (at least I think they were drug under) was small! Coons, bobcat, coyote (too big to get under or through my fence I think), fox, alien? They were gone and we were bummed as we really enjoyed them.
So....I ordered 20 more Black Spanish turkeys from a hatchery. They arrived (24 of them) about mid-April 2014. In the first 4 days we lost 6 of them, before they stabilized at 18. Once stabilized, they continued to grow at a good rate with no problems (until Thanksgiving and Christmas occurred, which brought us down to 16). Once they were old enough, we put them in the brooder/young chick side of our chicken coop (8x8 area). They loved it and enjoyed roosting on the pole in front of the large 4x4 window. They would go out into the chicken run during the day and back into the coop at night to roost.
However, as they grew older, they started to roam more and use the coop less and less to roost in, until they would no longer roost in it. Now, they will not go into the coop unless I put treats in there for the chickens……and even then, only a couple of the hens will go inside the coop. They much prefer to roost on our 6’ high fence surrounding the coop, whether its 90 degrees out or -20 below zero weather. The problem is, they would roam and roam a lot!
One day when coming home from work, I happened to notice a nice flock of turkeys on the neighbors lawn, about ½ a mile from our house. I thought it was pretty cool to see a wild flock of turkeys until I discovered they weren’t wild and they were mine! Luckily the neighbor was ok with it….this time, but they also made it clear they don’t want a bunch of Turkey poop in their yard! This was about July.
In addition, fences meant little to them. They could fly over it anytime they wanted, as long as they were smart enough that day to remember they could fly…..Meaning, they could fly over the fence if scared or onto the fence to roost, or if they decided to…..but sometimes seemed to forget they could fly and one or two would be stuck on the “wrong” side of the fence squawking, while the flock grazed towards the creek…..
They were really ranging freely…wide and far and causing some minor problems with neighbors located as explained above. Don’t get me wrong, we loved them and they are very interesting and fun and most of our neighbors think they are really cool, but one neighbor doesn’t.......or at least doesn’t want them on their property pooping in their yard….The problem is that the turkeys don’t know they aren’t supposed to leave our property or poop on the neighbors yard, even though I have repeatedly told them!
However, on a good note, 2014 was the first year grasshoppers didn’t eat most of the leaves on our trees and garden; and I believe this was because the Turkeys covered our entire pasture eating grasshoppers constantly. The turkeys range much further than our Rhode Island Reds or Buff Orpingtons do and seem to do a much better job of bug control than the chickens……They also ate all my raspberries in my yard and my grapes in the corner….In addition, I had planted a row, 500’ long, of raspberries from the north corner of our property to the creek (in our orchard) and they cleaned up what grew on them as well. They also got good at jumping up and nabbing cherries off our cherry trees. The feed bill was less, but they hogged all the fruit!
So now the dilemma, do we trim their wings and let them all get eaten because they can’t roost? Do I spend a bunch of money to put a top on my 20x30 chicken/turkey run and enslave them to a life of boredom? Don’t really want to do that as I like them eating our bugs and grasshoppers…
We struggled over what to do as we did not want to piss off the neighbor, but did not want to trim their wings and sentence them to a likely death by predator because they no longer could fly up to roost at night. Well, one day my wife was coming home and noticed the turkeys WALKING out our front gate along the driveway….DUH…… We closed the gate and that kept them in our pasture now 90% of the time as opposed to 40% of the time…
So….we put up a woven wire fence, effectively separating our house and driveway and orchard from the pasture (October 2014). This was also done to keep our other livestock out of our yard and orchard as well. Before, we only had electric fence up between the orchard and yard and although it kept out the big critters, the turkeys went through it (no surprise there).
Now, the turkeys had about 6.5 acres to roam on instead of 9. They would still get out of our pasture into the neighbors, but it was much reduced and it tended to be only the females leaving the pasture. I assume this is because the females are lighter….. or maybe just more motivated…my wife thinks!
Unfortunately, the roost they chose is the fence that divides our yard from the coop and unfortunately they do end up in our yard quite often. I think it just depends on which side of the fence they jump down in the morning. Not sure how to “make” them roost elsewhere without starting over with young ones? Anyone got ideas on how to “entice” them to a “better” roost?
As stated above, since putting up the fence, the turkeys rarely get out of our pasture. I am sure I will have to fence off our small patch of grapes and raspberries to keep them out of it for those occasions when they jump down on the wrong side of the roost. However, the fence seems to have hindered the turkeys feeling the “need” to visit the neighbors as they prefer to walk over fly. Due to the cold weather we received in early November (-10F), the turkeys have not really been roaming much. This coming spring will tell me if the fence will keep them in most of the time…. Or not.
Overall, heritage turkeys are extremely fun and satisfying to raise, but unless you clip their wings or enclose them, its likely they will roam a considerable distance from their roost.
Now we live on 9 acres completely fenced in with 4' high woven wire fence and decided to get some more turkeys, but wanted a heritage breed that could reproduce as well as walk....and not have problems like our bronze did. I was able to get one tom and three hens (Black Spanish) in January of 2014 (8 months old). They were friendly and would follow us around, but not so friendly we could pet them. They were lots of fun. However, they would jump the 4' high fence once in a while, so we trimmed one of their wings to prevent them from flying. This worked great! Later on we started getting about 2 eggs a day from the three hens in March and one of the hens went broody and set on her eggs (at last look at about 8 under her).
Then.....one morning, my wife called me from work panicked and stated one of the turkeys was dead/half eaten and the other three were missing. There was a light powdering of snow and after tracking the drag marks that evening we could see where something (a fox? tracks were mostly melted/gone) had drug the other three turkeys to our fence edges, before finding a small hole under the fence, where they/it were able to tug them under the fence to never be seen again. In addition, all the eggs had been eaten, without a shell to be found. Now we think it was a fox, as we had seen them around at times, but I just have a hard time believing that one fox would take 3 full grown turkeys and eat another on one night!? I do know dogs cannot get into our pasture and we have never had them in there before. I mean the hole they were drug under (at least I think they were drug under) was small! Coons, bobcat, coyote (too big to get under or through my fence I think), fox, alien? They were gone and we were bummed as we really enjoyed them.
So....I ordered 20 more Black Spanish turkeys from a hatchery. They arrived (24 of them) about mid-April 2014. In the first 4 days we lost 6 of them, before they stabilized at 18. Once stabilized, they continued to grow at a good rate with no problems (until Thanksgiving and Christmas occurred, which brought us down to 16). Once they were old enough, we put them in the brooder/young chick side of our chicken coop (8x8 area). They loved it and enjoyed roosting on the pole in front of the large 4x4 window. They would go out into the chicken run during the day and back into the coop at night to roost.
However, as they grew older, they started to roam more and use the coop less and less to roost in, until they would no longer roost in it. Now, they will not go into the coop unless I put treats in there for the chickens……and even then, only a couple of the hens will go inside the coop. They much prefer to roost on our 6’ high fence surrounding the coop, whether its 90 degrees out or -20 below zero weather. The problem is, they would roam and roam a lot!
One day when coming home from work, I happened to notice a nice flock of turkeys on the neighbors lawn, about ½ a mile from our house. I thought it was pretty cool to see a wild flock of turkeys until I discovered they weren’t wild and they were mine! Luckily the neighbor was ok with it….this time, but they also made it clear they don’t want a bunch of Turkey poop in their yard! This was about July.
In addition, fences meant little to them. They could fly over it anytime they wanted, as long as they were smart enough that day to remember they could fly…..Meaning, they could fly over the fence if scared or onto the fence to roost, or if they decided to…..but sometimes seemed to forget they could fly and one or two would be stuck on the “wrong” side of the fence squawking, while the flock grazed towards the creek…..
They were really ranging freely…wide and far and causing some minor problems with neighbors located as explained above. Don’t get me wrong, we loved them and they are very interesting and fun and most of our neighbors think they are really cool, but one neighbor doesn’t.......or at least doesn’t want them on their property pooping in their yard….The problem is that the turkeys don’t know they aren’t supposed to leave our property or poop on the neighbors yard, even though I have repeatedly told them!
However, on a good note, 2014 was the first year grasshoppers didn’t eat most of the leaves on our trees and garden; and I believe this was because the Turkeys covered our entire pasture eating grasshoppers constantly. The turkeys range much further than our Rhode Island Reds or Buff Orpingtons do and seem to do a much better job of bug control than the chickens……They also ate all my raspberries in my yard and my grapes in the corner….In addition, I had planted a row, 500’ long, of raspberries from the north corner of our property to the creek (in our orchard) and they cleaned up what grew on them as well. They also got good at jumping up and nabbing cherries off our cherry trees. The feed bill was less, but they hogged all the fruit!
So now the dilemma, do we trim their wings and let them all get eaten because they can’t roost? Do I spend a bunch of money to put a top on my 20x30 chicken/turkey run and enslave them to a life of boredom? Don’t really want to do that as I like them eating our bugs and grasshoppers…
We struggled over what to do as we did not want to piss off the neighbor, but did not want to trim their wings and sentence them to a likely death by predator because they no longer could fly up to roost at night. Well, one day my wife was coming home and noticed the turkeys WALKING out our front gate along the driveway….DUH…… We closed the gate and that kept them in our pasture now 90% of the time as opposed to 40% of the time…
So….we put up a woven wire fence, effectively separating our house and driveway and orchard from the pasture (October 2014). This was also done to keep our other livestock out of our yard and orchard as well. Before, we only had electric fence up between the orchard and yard and although it kept out the big critters, the turkeys went through it (no surprise there).
Now, the turkeys had about 6.5 acres to roam on instead of 9. They would still get out of our pasture into the neighbors, but it was much reduced and it tended to be only the females leaving the pasture. I assume this is because the females are lighter….. or maybe just more motivated…my wife thinks!
Unfortunately, the roost they chose is the fence that divides our yard from the coop and unfortunately they do end up in our yard quite often. I think it just depends on which side of the fence they jump down in the morning. Not sure how to “make” them roost elsewhere without starting over with young ones? Anyone got ideas on how to “entice” them to a “better” roost?
As stated above, since putting up the fence, the turkeys rarely get out of our pasture. I am sure I will have to fence off our small patch of grapes and raspberries to keep them out of it for those occasions when they jump down on the wrong side of the roost. However, the fence seems to have hindered the turkeys feeling the “need” to visit the neighbors as they prefer to walk over fly. Due to the cold weather we received in early November (-10F), the turkeys have not really been roaming much. This coming spring will tell me if the fence will keep them in most of the time…. Or not.
Overall, heritage turkeys are extremely fun and satisfying to raise, but unless you clip their wings or enclose them, its likely they will roam a considerable distance from their roost.
