A few questions on raising turkeys?

sydney13

Songster
Mar 11, 2010
1,364
24
204
Massachusetts
I'm planning on ordering some meat bird chicks next spring and was wondering about adding 2 or 3 broad breasted turkeys to the order as long as they could be raised with my flock (chickens, geese and a duck). My birds free range during the day so really the only time they are confined together is at night when they are in the coop. The chicken's and duck sleep up on their roast so the turkeys would only have to share the floor (broad breasteds can't roost, right?) with the 2 geese. Do you think the turkeys would get along alright with the geese? If not I was thinking they could sleep in a pen I have which is fully fenced in however, if something really wanted to get through it could dig under?'I'm not sure how susceptible turkeys are to predators but we don't seem to have many and I've never seen evidenced of an animal try to dig under into the pen.
Next question is what age do turkeys begin to make their gobbling noise? Are they ready to butcher before they get real loud? I know the toms can get a racket going but what about the hens, do they make as much noise?
Ok and my last question is can the poults be raised under a broody chicken? I plan on putting my meat chicks under a broody chicken and was wondering if the turkeys could be raised with the chicks under the mamma hen?
Thanks for the help
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broad breasted turkeys CAN roost, i have one-- but then he got a lot of medical problems &
if he could walk then i'd know whether or not he could perch (but that's beside the point)

i'm not sure about whether or not they'll get along with geese, sorry i can't help
ya on that

depending on the age of the turkeys and how many you get they should be ok
fighting off opossums and raccoons but dogs and other large sized creatures
they won't do so hot on

female turkey do not make all the same sounds as the males but
they are just as noisy. i'm not sure exactly when they start to gobble
but i think that its mayb a couple months... they'll start to make weird
sounds when they start. and then when you have a full grown turkey (which
usually 6 weeks) u can hear them from a mile away

depending on the breed of chicken, will depend on whether or not
she will take care of them

I hope i helped
 
I HAVE lost turkeys to raccoons. I have also seen the aftermath after an owl took a grown wild turkey out of a tree.

Up to 5 months or so, I have seen BBW turkeys roost as high as on a 6' fence, so yes they do roost.

As long as Blackhead (Histomoniasis) isn't a problem there they should be ok with the chickens.

I have a pair of geese (one African and one African cross) and they got along fine with the poults, though I can't guarantee that yours will. My older goose was actually upset when the turkeys wandered away from her, I finally had to lock them up because she always got upset when they wandered down the road.

Turkeys do tend to wander further than other birds if they are free ranging, I have had to go a quarter of a mile down the road to herd them back home.
 
when are turkies fullgrown. I had mine for 5 months. They gont gobble that much they're really quiet the girls do a whistle noise and the mails gobble. they dont start laying for a year i think not sure. Mine roost and free range they're fine with chickens.
 

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