thats alot of turkeys...
HERE is where we are going to talk about a sustainable meat bird flock
- Thread starter CARS
- Start date
Wow, so much info, so many great questions and comments! Here's a response to a bunch, all at once.
CHICKENS (mostly):
Quote:
Mine pluck just as easily as the CX's. More feathers, but they come out just as well. The key is a proper scald. If you butcher before the feather development is complete, (or on an older bird, too soon after a molt) there will be lots of pin feathers. Otherwise, no prob.
Turkeys, we actually hang up (after they're dead, my DH walks up and shoots them in the head, they bleed out really well from a head shot, too) and dry pluck as fast as we can while they're still warm. As they cool, the feathers get harder to pull. I go for the big wing and tail feathers first, then the rest of the body. Once the feathers become hard to pull we stop, and I scald to get the rest out. If it a really big turkey, we don't have a pot big enough, so I plop them into the sink and pour hot water on them from the tea kettle, or heat a big pot to dip water out of with a smaller pan. That works surprisingly well.
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I know with many combos, it does make a difference which is the roo and which is the hen. I can't say on that particular mix. You might look over in the genetics section, and see what you can find out over there. We have some real genetic whizzes on BYC, and most are happy to share info with you. Good luck with your experiments
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I don't think they are hard to pluck at all.....I do them myself, and it takes me about 2 minutes per bird including pin feathers to get them totally stripped down....
By hand? Or with a plucker? If you can do that in 2 minutes, by hand, you should make a video, please, and teach me!!!
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I think you mean roo over hens....
Quote:
My best cross so far has been Cornish/Brahma. The cross had pretty good, full breasts. But I had the cross bass-ackwards, (that's was one of my mom's words) C. hen, B. roo. Undersized C. hen (hatchery trash) birds, too. Nice moms, but, not the best for breeding. This year I have the C. roo, to try it the right way around.
I totally agree about the hatchery stock. I don't even order from hatcheries anymore, though I might at some time for some red broilers(maybe). Hatchery trash just doesn't make good stock for any kind of serious breeding project.
TURKEYS:
Quote:
I don't know. I've only raised the BB's once, I don't know if they can be kept small enough to breed. It would be problematic, because if I were also raising some for meat at the same time, I'd have to confine the breeders, I don't like to do that, if I can avoid it. I really don't want to AI, at all. If they can't do it by themselves, I ain't gonna do it for them.
I've considered keeping a pair of BB hens, and using a heritage tom. I know that will work, I have a friend who had a BBW hen and his BR tom mated her often. We never got her eggs to hatch, though, most of them got broken before he could collect them, the few we got didn't hatch.
My ideal turkey would be one too heavy to fly up in the tree tops, but with that great BR or 'gansett taste, and less leg problems. My BB's did really well, but they were beginning to get leg trouble by the time we butchered. I think I'd butcher them just a little younger than we did, to avoid that. They had no other health issues. They ranged and foraged, and were very active birds, just didn't fly.
My biggest problem was keeping them out of my tomatoes. Many times, I reached for a big, beautiful tomato, to find the entire other side was gone, and I held a soggy, juicy, shell of half of a tomato in my hand.
They did help groom the sheepdog. They stand around him when he was napping outside, and eat the stick-tights out of his fur.
Quote:
Too small. I only raised one, this year, a weasel got into the coop early in the summer, and got all my other turkey poults, and some chickens, and 1 'scovy. 14 birds, total. The ones that flew up in the trees, when I had them before, were Narragansett and BR.
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I have yet to loose a single turkey to predators, and they roost outside every night unless I carry them into the barn on extremely cold nights. They only perch about 4 feet off the ground most of the time.
I live in a high predator area, so I have three Great Pyrs and an excellent black lab.
Mine flew way up in the trees, there was no way to reach them. I couldn't even get to the trees, they were out on steep hollow slopes (that's a gully, to those of you not in this part of the country). I have some good dogs, too, but they can't fly, or climb trees. Unlike the raccoons and owls. Out of 12 birds, 6 'gansett, 6 BR, we only got 4 to the freezer. The last BR tom joined the wild turkeys, the other hens went broody, nested out in the fields, and got killed by whatever found them before we could, except for a couple that got killed at night in the trees. So we lost 8 out of 12.
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Mine were brooded indoors, in the house, in the living room, with us. Then, they were kept in the coop, in a separate area from the chickens, until they were big enough not to need a heat lamp, and they could mingle. They went back inside with the chickens every night. Then they grew up, and discovered the joys of trees. We tried luring them in with feed, but they didn't care, they headed for the trees. I'm not sure just exactly how a person would go about "training" a turkey to go inside at night, since what I did doesn't work. They don't respond like dogs. Maybe Cesar Milan knows a turkey whisperer?
Quote:
How do you train yours? Read my above statements on the subject, is there something else I could do? I wouldn't say I exactly let them get into the habit of flying into the trees...I couldn't fly up and get them down. I tried confining them for a week to break the habit, it didn't work.
Quote:
They do feed themselves a lot, they forage well, but so did the BBB's. There wasn't much difference in that regard. Letting them raise babies themselves, didn't work for me at all. I'd love to work it out so could keep some breeders, though, and not lose them to predation or whatever. If they go in at night, they're fine. It's the great outdoors at night, that will do them in, around here.
Quote:
Well, variety in your diet for one thing. As for turkey being too big for 2 people...a pig's too big, a cow's too big...if you try to cook and eat it all at once.
The simple solution, of course, is to cut it up and make smaller packages of meat before you freeze it. You can keep some parts to roast, and grind up others, or filet some, pressure can some, whatever. I love ground turkey, myself. I make patties, dredge them in flour, and fry them. Or make a lower fat non-breaded turkey burger, there was a great recipe on Oprah, one day, and I've read others. I have a recipe for turkey meatloaf, too. Turkey breast strips are great, fried.
Quantity and efficiency are not always the main points. Taste, health, and quality are big factors. Otherwise everybody would just buy the cheapest meat possible at all times, and never eat anything else.
PIGS:
Quote:
I'd say go for it. We paid $40 each for ours, and that was too much, average around here is $30, about the cheapest is $20-25. If you only raise them to the standard 200-250 lbs., they shouldn't be too aggressive by then. Older than that, they tend to run into a lot more fat than most people want, and by then they eat a lot more, too. Next time we raise pigs, we'll get them later in the year, and only feed them maybe 4 months before we butcher. This year, it didn't get cold enough until very late in the year, we butchered 2, then it got too cold, and stayed that way, etc....
We wound up feeding them a lot longer than we needed to, and so we lost money. Also, here, you can't get much for a large pig on the hoof. If you pay a processor, you can sell the meat and at least break even, maybe make some money, if you avoided all other costly mistakes. You can't sell the meat if you process yourself, and you can't really get certified to process without spending thousands (tens of thousands) to do it. We had no way to transport the pigs to a processor, so we were pretty much stuck doing it ourselves. The first one was tough, because we were learning how, the second one not bad at all. The third we sold, (at a loss) live, the fourth we shared with a guy and let him do it, that was the easiest of all. But now we know how to butcher a pig, and next time we will ONLY get 2 pigs, and we'll build a better located gizmo to hang them up once they're dead.
I'd ALWAYS watch my back with pigs, and never go into the enclosure with them if you are alone, if it can be avoided. Never forget they are omnivores, and be very careful. My sheepdog got into the enclosure once and they surrounded him and tried to eat him, it was a close call, and scared me and the dog. That's another reason I don't want to breed pigs. I'm relieved they're not here anymore, I don't have to always watch what/who might stray into the pen. I didn't realize what constant, back-of-the-mind worry that was, until the last pig was gone.
Quote:
Yes....MMMMMM! It's very good, better than store-bought for sure!
I don't want to breed them because they scare me. Mama pigs are well known to be aggressive, the sow that produced the ones we had was very aggressive, and monstrously huge. Her back was well over waist high to me, (I'm 5'6") she was built like a...a...I don't know like a what, but really, really, big, and round, and a real powerhouse.
I have no idea what breed(s) they were, the people who had them didn't know either.
If I lived where pigs were harder to come by, I might consider keeping breeders, but pigs are popular in these parts, and it's very easy to get local piglets. I know several sources withing 10 miles. So for us, the expense and risk of keeping breeders wouldn't make sense.
Oddly, it's much harder to find good quality chickens and turkeys around here, than it is pigs.
CHICKENS (mostly):
Quote:
Mine pluck just as easily as the CX's. More feathers, but they come out just as well. The key is a proper scald. If you butcher before the feather development is complete, (or on an older bird, too soon after a molt) there will be lots of pin feathers. Otherwise, no prob.
Turkeys, we actually hang up (after they're dead, my DH walks up and shoots them in the head, they bleed out really well from a head shot, too) and dry pluck as fast as we can while they're still warm. As they cool, the feathers get harder to pull. I go for the big wing and tail feathers first, then the rest of the body. Once the feathers become hard to pull we stop, and I scald to get the rest out. If it a really big turkey, we don't have a pot big enough, so I plop them into the sink and pour hot water on them from the tea kettle, or heat a big pot to dip water out of with a smaller pan. That works surprisingly well.
Quote:
I know with many combos, it does make a difference which is the roo and which is the hen. I can't say on that particular mix. You might look over in the genetics section, and see what you can find out over there. We have some real genetic whizzes on BYC, and most are happy to share info with you. Good luck with your experiments
Quote:
I don't think they are hard to pluck at all.....I do them myself, and it takes me about 2 minutes per bird including pin feathers to get them totally stripped down....
By hand? Or with a plucker? If you can do that in 2 minutes, by hand, you should make a video, please, and teach me!!!
Quote:
I think you mean roo over hens....
Quote:
My best cross so far has been Cornish/Brahma. The cross had pretty good, full breasts. But I had the cross bass-ackwards, (that's was one of my mom's words) C. hen, B. roo. Undersized C. hen (hatchery trash) birds, too. Nice moms, but, not the best for breeding. This year I have the C. roo, to try it the right way around.
I totally agree about the hatchery stock. I don't even order from hatcheries anymore, though I might at some time for some red broilers(maybe). Hatchery trash just doesn't make good stock for any kind of serious breeding project.
TURKEYS:
Quote:
I don't know. I've only raised the BB's once, I don't know if they can be kept small enough to breed. It would be problematic, because if I were also raising some for meat at the same time, I'd have to confine the breeders, I don't like to do that, if I can avoid it. I really don't want to AI, at all. If they can't do it by themselves, I ain't gonna do it for them.
I've considered keeping a pair of BB hens, and using a heritage tom. I know that will work, I have a friend who had a BBW hen and his BR tom mated her often. We never got her eggs to hatch, though, most of them got broken before he could collect them, the few we got didn't hatch.
My ideal turkey would be one too heavy to fly up in the tree tops, but with that great BR or 'gansett taste, and less leg problems. My BB's did really well, but they were beginning to get leg trouble by the time we butchered. I think I'd butcher them just a little younger than we did, to avoid that. They had no other health issues. They ranged and foraged, and were very active birds, just didn't fly.
My biggest problem was keeping them out of my tomatoes. Many times, I reached for a big, beautiful tomato, to find the entire other side was gone, and I held a soggy, juicy, shell of half of a tomato in my hand.
They did help groom the sheepdog. They stand around him when he was napping outside, and eat the stick-tights out of his fur.
Quote:
Too small. I only raised one, this year, a weasel got into the coop early in the summer, and got all my other turkey poults, and some chickens, and 1 'scovy. 14 birds, total. The ones that flew up in the trees, when I had them before, were Narragansett and BR.
Quote:
I have yet to loose a single turkey to predators, and they roost outside every night unless I carry them into the barn on extremely cold nights. They only perch about 4 feet off the ground most of the time.
I live in a high predator area, so I have three Great Pyrs and an excellent black lab.
Mine flew way up in the trees, there was no way to reach them. I couldn't even get to the trees, they were out on steep hollow slopes (that's a gully, to those of you not in this part of the country). I have some good dogs, too, but they can't fly, or climb trees. Unlike the raccoons and owls. Out of 12 birds, 6 'gansett, 6 BR, we only got 4 to the freezer. The last BR tom joined the wild turkeys, the other hens went broody, nested out in the fields, and got killed by whatever found them before we could, except for a couple that got killed at night in the trees. So we lost 8 out of 12.
Quote:
Mine were brooded indoors, in the house, in the living room, with us. Then, they were kept in the coop, in a separate area from the chickens, until they were big enough not to need a heat lamp, and they could mingle. They went back inside with the chickens every night. Then they grew up, and discovered the joys of trees. We tried luring them in with feed, but they didn't care, they headed for the trees. I'm not sure just exactly how a person would go about "training" a turkey to go inside at night, since what I did doesn't work. They don't respond like dogs. Maybe Cesar Milan knows a turkey whisperer?
Quote:
How do you train yours? Read my above statements on the subject, is there something else I could do? I wouldn't say I exactly let them get into the habit of flying into the trees...I couldn't fly up and get them down. I tried confining them for a week to break the habit, it didn't work.
Quote:
They do feed themselves a lot, they forage well, but so did the BBB's. There wasn't much difference in that regard. Letting them raise babies themselves, didn't work for me at all. I'd love to work it out so could keep some breeders, though, and not lose them to predation or whatever. If they go in at night, they're fine. It's the great outdoors at night, that will do them in, around here.
Quote:
Well, variety in your diet for one thing. As for turkey being too big for 2 people...a pig's too big, a cow's too big...if you try to cook and eat it all at once.
The simple solution, of course, is to cut it up and make smaller packages of meat before you freeze it. You can keep some parts to roast, and grind up others, or filet some, pressure can some, whatever. I love ground turkey, myself. I make patties, dredge them in flour, and fry them. Or make a lower fat non-breaded turkey burger, there was a great recipe on Oprah, one day, and I've read others. I have a recipe for turkey meatloaf, too. Turkey breast strips are great, fried.
Quantity and efficiency are not always the main points. Taste, health, and quality are big factors. Otherwise everybody would just buy the cheapest meat possible at all times, and never eat anything else.
PIGS:
Quote:
I'd say go for it. We paid $40 each for ours, and that was too much, average around here is $30, about the cheapest is $20-25. If you only raise them to the standard 200-250 lbs., they shouldn't be too aggressive by then. Older than that, they tend to run into a lot more fat than most people want, and by then they eat a lot more, too. Next time we raise pigs, we'll get them later in the year, and only feed them maybe 4 months before we butcher. This year, it didn't get cold enough until very late in the year, we butchered 2, then it got too cold, and stayed that way, etc....
We wound up feeding them a lot longer than we needed to, and so we lost money. Also, here, you can't get much for a large pig on the hoof. If you pay a processor, you can sell the meat and at least break even, maybe make some money, if you avoided all other costly mistakes. You can't sell the meat if you process yourself, and you can't really get certified to process without spending thousands (tens of thousands) to do it. We had no way to transport the pigs to a processor, so we were pretty much stuck doing it ourselves. The first one was tough, because we were learning how, the second one not bad at all. The third we sold, (at a loss) live, the fourth we shared with a guy and let him do it, that was the easiest of all. But now we know how to butcher a pig, and next time we will ONLY get 2 pigs, and we'll build a better located gizmo to hang them up once they're dead.
I'd ALWAYS watch my back with pigs, and never go into the enclosure with them if you are alone, if it can be avoided. Never forget they are omnivores, and be very careful. My sheepdog got into the enclosure once and they surrounded him and tried to eat him, it was a close call, and scared me and the dog. That's another reason I don't want to breed pigs. I'm relieved they're not here anymore, I don't have to always watch what/who might stray into the pen. I didn't realize what constant, back-of-the-mind worry that was, until the last pig was gone.
Quote:
Yes....MMMMMM! It's very good, better than store-bought for sure!
I don't want to breed them because they scare me. Mama pigs are well known to be aggressive, the sow that produced the ones we had was very aggressive, and monstrously huge. Her back was well over waist high to me, (I'm 5'6") she was built like a...a...I don't know like a what, but really, really, big, and round, and a real powerhouse.
I have no idea what breed(s) they were, the people who had them didn't know either.
If I lived where pigs were harder to come by, I might consider keeping breeders, but pigs are popular in these parts, and it's very easy to get local piglets. I know several sources withing 10 miles. So for us, the expense and risk of keeping breeders wouldn't make sense.
Oddly, it's much harder to find good quality chickens and turkeys around here, than it is pigs.
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Here's my ultra simple way to train turkeys to go in at night. Train your breeding pair as follows and they will train the babies to do the same. Once the pair is old enough to go into thier permanent pen (where you want them to roost), keep them confined until they are of a size that you think they should be safe from daytime predators. Start allowing them to go out and free range. Don't feed them or only feed a portion of grower or whatever in the mornings on those days. Let them graze. Late in the afternoon (near dark), feed them in thier pens. They should be hungry and will go right in. Shut the door, let them roost. Repeat this until they get the routine down. Then you can start leaving the door open and just watching to make sure they go in. After dark, shut the pen door. If anyone strays off, try to get them and put them in thier pen if possible, because if they stay out they will try it more. During the training phase, I always watch them when it is getting dark and if I see anyone trying to roost in the wrong place I shoo them into the pen. I always keep the grain feeder in the roosting pen. Water also. This method works for me,my birds must be shut up at night as we have racoons in our yard every night and a bobcat which has killed some birds that were allowed to roost in trees. We also have Mountain Lions.
That was a long post....
Quote:
Thanks, great suggestions, next time I get turkeys, I'll try it your way.
Only prob is, if they do go to roost in the wrong place, it's generally up about 30-40 feet in a tree on a steep slope, no way I can get to them to "shoo them in". So if I miss one, that's it. All I can do is try again the next night, if the bird survives. We have a few bobcats around, too. No cougars that I'm aware of, but coons, coyotes, owls, hawks. They really haven't been much of a problem, except with turkey that stayed out all night, or went broody out where I couldn't find them. Even the guineas are seldom bothered, except when they go out and brood where they can be eaten.
Our predator losses over the last 13-14 years are really low, all things considered. Partly due to my dogs, I'm sure.
Thanks, great suggestions, next time I get turkeys, I'll try it your way.
Only prob is, if they do go to roost in the wrong place, it's generally up about 30-40 feet in a tree on a steep slope, no way I can get to them to "shoo them in". So if I miss one, that's it. All I can do is try again the next night, if the bird survives. We have a few bobcats around, too. No cougars that I'm aware of, but coons, coyotes, owls, hawks. They really haven't been much of a problem, except with turkey that stayed out all night, or went broody out where I couldn't find them. Even the guineas are seldom bothered, except when they go out and brood where they can be eaten.
Our predator losses over the last 13-14 years are really low, all things considered. Partly due to my dogs, I'm sure.
Quote:
Yes, it was!
Yes, it was!
Thats why you should start the training when they are little and you have to spy on them every night near dark to stop them (hopefully) before they get into the tree. training takes some time but then it saves you lots of trouble later on. good luck!
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Would you elaborate? Is that a Ply. Rock roo and Jersey hen or vise versa? How many (m/f) did you start with and how are you working on improving on your success?
I agree Id like to hear more about this...
Would you elaborate? Is that a Ply. Rock roo and Jersey hen or vise versa? How many (m/f) did you start with and how are you working on improving on your success?
I agree Id like to hear more about this...
Quote:
Okay thanks
Okay thanks
Quote:
Yes I do. I just miss spoke. You guys are going to kill me today. It must be me
(btw. You forgot the ' in don't and forgot the period at the end of your sentence. I can play these games too
This is like herding cats at this point, aint it?
Yes I do. I just miss spoke. You guys are going to kill me today. It must be me
(btw. You forgot the ' in don't and forgot the period at the end of your sentence. I can play these games too
This is like herding cats at this point, aint it?
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