BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[Beer can]

I feed my birds whole ground fish heads guts bones everything periodically (only what we catch, ain't paying for it) never noticed any fishy taste.
I do either cook first or freeze for awhile and then feed raw to kill any potential parasites.

 

[Beekissed]

I'm not sure how often wild turkeys ingest earth worms.. do they dig a lot like chickens do> Seems they more walk along picking things off plants, surfaces...

if they get black head, they die and disappear from view via predators and scavengers, once the symptoms start they go down hill extremely fast.

That is also true of Marek's and fowl pox. It is common not every where yet a lot want vaccinated chicks. It also takes just one infected bird to enter the premises........ not necessarily an management issue.

Yes, wild turkeys do a lot like chickens do....but much larger! They can plow through a section of leaves in the forest like crazy...looks like a herd of pigs have been there. They eat anything any other bird will eat, including earthworms, grubs, etc. Definitely not politely walking through the forest picking things off plants for their tucker.

 

[DesertChic]

And this is what they will do to your land:



1400 lbs for two months is 700 lbs per month. You have 70+ chickens right now, right? (Pre-hatch). So.... you use ~10 lbs of feed per chicken per month?

(I'm trying to recall how much mine go through a month per chicken, but I bet it's close to that - I just have fewer chickens.)

- Ant Farm

I was very proud of myself to have 300 lbs of feed left from my last shipment of feed when I picked up this delivery. Usually I wind up having to visit the local feed store for an extra bag or two before the next delivery is available. I once tried tracking feed consumption per bird using a spreadsheet I'd been supplied, but it was hopeless. I've got so many birds of different ages on different types of feed that it became too much work to track....says the woman who tracks eggs laid by each bird plus the egg weight, plus bird weights, plus regular photos.....

 

[DesertChic]

Just feed it to the chickens....

I'm thinking you have some VERY well fed rodents there.....how in the world do only that many chickens eat that much feed???

You can feed them deer...no problem with deer meat. My chickens will gobble it right alongside the dogs.

None of the feeds sits out over night and we keep the yet-to-be-used feed secure from rodents. The few mice we had on our property before getting the chickens were quickly devoured. Keep in mind that we don't have much in the way of grasses around here for the chickens to feed on...just lots of dirt and rock...so I really don't have the advantage of allowing them to free range for much of their food. The eat less during the spring and summer when we can give them grass trimmings from other parts of the yard and the bugs are abundant, but the desert doesn't supply much free chicken feed even then. If the little buggers would eat Fire Ants I'd probably never have to buy feed again...and the ants DO get far more feed than I would like, but I've yet to figure out an effective way to rid our property of the little pests without resorting to poisonous chemicals.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

I wonder if this is really what we have here in Cali. I had a Wild Boar ram my Jetta on the passenger side one morning on my way to work in Jan. It was Totaled by insurance, new too, only a 2014, happened in 2016, the animal ran off into the hillside, I could hear it thrashing around in the bushes and making squeels. But I swear it was huge, its eyes and snout I could see clear as anything even though it was pitchblack out, were right there in my Passenger window!

To my knowledge California has a wild pig problem and pigs get big a nasty... so most likely it was a feral pig.

 

[DesertChic]

I don't know about fishy taste in eggs from fish in their food....but.... I do know that fishy taste in eggs is a genetic trait.
Best,
Karen

If the hens consume a "fishy" tasting fish you will DEFINITELY taste it in the eggs, and it's not even remotely pleasant. When we started up our aquaponics we added feeder goldfish to help establish the habitat along with the fingerling Tilapia. The Tilapia would eat half a goldfish, leaving the head. We mad the mistake of feeding these heads to the chickens. YUCK! Never again!. As a rule, if the fish odor is strong then only the roosters or the chicks are allowed to have it. I don't know about changes to the meat flavor though. None of my butchered birds ever tasted like fish.

 

[Kev]

Yes, wild turkeys do a lot like chickens do....but much larger! They can plow through a section of leaves in the forest like crazy...looks like a herd of pigs have been there. They eat anything any other bird will eat, including earthworms, grubs, etc. Definitely not politely walking through the forest picking things off plants for their tucker.

http://www.mass.gov/eea/agencies/df...rkey-faq.html#Whatkindsofdiseasesdoturkeysget

Quote:

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

I'm wondering what wild turkeys do...I'm doubting they are passing up any earthworms out there. Free range chickens are also prone to gobbling up any earthworms they spot and I've not had to deworm a free range flock in 40 yrs.

I'm thinking the whole earthworm vector thing is possibly only an eventuality if someone already has a parasite or blackhead problem in their flocks due to a too high stocking rate on the soils.

I think a lot of what we worry about in our livestock relates to density - I do believe more space per bird is better (depending on the setting/landscape), but not everyone has that option (and some breeds are better at self care and wide foraging than others). So as their caretakers, we find ourselves putting in extra effort to mitigate that situation. I would bet that chickens that have blackhead would probably deposit the organism in a much higher density around one's yard/farm than wild turkeys would encounter.

Quote: I don't follow (maybe I haven't had enough coffee?)

Quote: That's what I was thinking, DesertChic - only so much the birds can forage from rock. My own birds have stripped their paddocks and are therefore eating more feed (less to eat outside) - I'm refilling the feeders more. I need to swap paddocks, but I've got some other yard rearranging to do first.

Quote: That's what I'd heard...

- Ant Farm

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

I just went out to give everyone their soaked kitten food. I thought they were going to start chewing on my ankles!!!!! I'm leaving the pans in there for a little bit, because they are drinking the soak water as well.

- Ant Farm

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Just slathered Monkey's comb - tips and blade were turning bluish again today. The others' big combs are fine, I'm thinking Monkey has circulation issues. But I slathered all of the boys in that coop (all big combs).

@Beekissed , would you mind describing/explaining the one-time seasonal castor oil treatment you described doing for your birds?

- Ant Farm