CAN YOU FREERANGE A TRUKEY?

[chickenweirdo1]

I have 17 chickens that i free range. I was looking to get turkeys for meat. I was wondering the orientation time to a coop, and can you free range them at all? I was going to get a more domestic breed like midget whites.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

I bought some chickens at a place they were free ranging all kinds of turkeys and had 1 wild that would come brood at their place occasionally. At feeding time, they tapped on the bucket and called, all the turkeys followed to the pen. I don't know how long it took them to "home" to it.

Hope this helps!

 

[chickenweirdo1]

Sounds like my chickens they come to the dinner bell.

 

[jmartin0411]

We have two young turkeys that free range in the afternoons with our chickens and ducks and go into roost at night. The breeder that we buy most of our stock from has turkeys free ranging with chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, emu etc.

 

[feedman77]

I free range my turkeys. They mostly come back and roost on fences on the main pen.

The only time I keep them locked up is during the hens laying season.

If i let them do a hidden nest I lose them to predators.

 

[chickenweirdo1]

How long did you keep them in the coop before you let them free range?

 

[Aust1227]

We free range our turkeys, and put them in at night.

When we put a new set of turkeys in the turken pen we leave them in there for about 72 hours. Then we let them out. Every night we go out around dusk, walk to their pen, and they follow us in.

Every so often we will have a lady that is off in the woods egging, we usually find her on the top of the pen in the morning (rarely find the missing egg!!).

Just to count eggs, and keep them in tune with the pen, we try to leave them in at least one day every other week.

Turkeys are a ton of fun, they are so much more interesting than chickens. And they are beautiful!