what size turkey do you want for thanksgiving? my white tom was started early august and butchered 18.5 lbs which was almost too big for the fryer. my bronzes dressed at 14+ lbs at 5 months and this year the bronzes were 12ish lbs dresses at 3 months
I can use my iPad emojis??! 
My mom wants a 20+ and the others I don't really care because they're just for us for ground turkey and stuff like that.
i would recommend starting them in late june, early july.....i believe the conversion is 72% live weight??? @R2elk @CindyinSD I fed basically free choice and allowed some free ranging with 3 from last year......this year, I supplemented with greek yogurt as they didn’t seem to be eating as much as i thought they should.
Ok thank you
that brings to mind another “logistical” issue....this year, our scalding pot was a bit on the small side too (larger ones were inadvertently tossed in reorganization) one of the birds got a bit too hot and damaged the skin in that area. i don’t think dry plucking would work very well.....we had a very difficult time getting quills out this year even scaldingI got mine in the first half of April and finally broke down and butchered them in (I think) late October. They were huge.I had to carry them to the processing area because they could barely waddle. They were so sweet, though. I dreaded killing them.
The one I pulled out of the freezer for Thanksgiving weighed 38 lbs, processed. Don’t do that. Don’t wait that long. I know it sounds great, a monster roast turkey like that, but logistically for me it was a nightmare. DH had to help me hold them to kill them. He is too, too tender-hearted for that sort of thing.
And you can imagine how heavy they were taking them out of the scalding pot, all those wet feathers. If I were going to do it again (which I’m not), I would at least try dry plucking. The Thanksgiving one was very good, but I’m sticking with heritage birds from now on.
