Chickens and turkeys?

[thecrumbler]

I've read both yay and nay on the subject of housing these two together - mainly that chickens can possibly carry blackhead and pass it to poults.

Our 9 week old chickens are going outside finally this weekend. They've been on medicated feed the last 3 weeks and I'm deworming them next week.

Our 3 weeks old poults are kept separate because I havent decided if it would be right to house them together.

Have you ever housed poults/chicks together? What were the results? Any tips? The poults are already slightly larger than our bantams. Thanks!!

 

[HEChicken]

I've housed and free-ranged mine together for years. If you live in an area where blackhead is not a problem, there is no issue with doing that. You can call your county extension agent and ask if they've had any reported cases of blackhead in YOUR area - clearly there isn't an issue where I live but that doesn't mean your results wouldn't be different.

Here's the thing though. It isn't just a matter of not housing them together. If you have concerns about blackhead, they can't share any space - no free-ranging the same areas, or keeping brooders next to each other, and you would even want to employ bio-security (change clothes etc) before moving from chickens to turkeys on a daily basis, just doing your chores.

So personally for me it would come down to I can either keep them together or I can only keep one species because for me it wouldn't be practical to keep both species but keep them distant enough from one another not to infect them.

 

[kmartinez]

I have chickens and turkey eggs in an incubator. My plan is to house them separately. One reason is my coop is 10x10 it is housing 17 chickens at this time I think even adding one heritage turkey might be pushing the space and since i want to keep 3 always the room is not there for them. I have read up on blackhead, the woman i purchased my eggs from locally says she keeps her chickens and turkeys free range however she makes sure to worm the chickens and turkeys routinely because even though she has not had issues she knows people in the area that have had issues. So i been reading up on natural worming for chickens and turkeys. I have so much more to learn on it though about this topic.

 

[thecrumbler]

Thank you!! I asked at my feed store and they'd never heard of a local case, nor our county. We just have a lot of wild birds since we're on a lake, I read they can carry it too, but I actually talked to a local gentleman a few miles from us who has turkeys and chickens free range for the last 20yrs without issue, so that's pretty nice