Lessons Learned

[Me & My Peeps]

Ok, I have decided to try my hand at turkeys - now that I seem to have this chicken thing pretty much down. I have read a fair portion of the threads here in the Turkey section and I have also read a quite a few post's that conflict each other. I dont want to ask a bunch of questions that most people are probably tired of answering so, how about this;

If you could list the 5 most important lessons you have learned and advice you could give about raising turkey's for food-not pets- what would they be?

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[ziggywiggy]

1. Pick a heritage breed that you like.
2. Build a nice pen. I have a 25'x25'x5' horse fencing pen with a 8'x8'x8' inclosure for their roost where I keep 3 turkeys. Any more than that I eat or sell and they are prolific breeders. Out of those three, I could easly raise 25 to 30 poults.
3. Feed them a high quality feed. I feed Purina Flock Raiser.
4. If possible, let them free range. Too me that's a biggy. If I couldn't free range, I wouldn't raise them.
5. Enjoy yourself. Turkeys are very cool.

 

[OmaBird]

1. Broad Breasted turkeys taste like supermarket turkeys and cost more to raise yourself than to buy them when they are on sale.

2. Heritage turkeys take a long time to raise, will go through more food to get eating size, but taste so much better with fewer problems that you get from the fast growing Broad Breasted turkeys.

3. Preditors cause alot more deaths than disease. Turkeys are pretty heathy. Locking them in a night helps.

4. I find the older heritage birds better tasting than the younger ones. Much more juicy.

5. Corn finishing seem to just make added fat on the breast skin. Yuck!

 

[Me & My Peeps]

Thanks!!