Heritage turkeys survival instincts

[elcarchick]

How do broad-breasted and heritage turkeys survival instincts compare?
I am completely new to turkeys. I have raised chickens and I understand chickens a lot better. This years I purchased 6 BBB poults from a hatchery. They are close to 8 weeks now and though I adore them and find them a lot more interesting and human-oriented than chickens, I am getting really exhausted from their helplessness. Unlike chickens who don't really care much about me being around and can entertain themselves and take care of themselves (by that I mean that they know to seek for shelter at night and when it rains), my BBB turkeys refuse to do anything unless I am around. They would be running along the fence of their enclosure back and forth calling for me. The moment I come back they relax and start foraging, dust-bathing, playing, etc. They have a shelter where I lock them up at night but they won't go there on their own. If I go inside their shelter they will follow me and jump on the perch and will go to sleep, if I do not do that, they will pile up near the fence closest to our house and will sleep there under the stars (or clouds and rain). If it rains, again, they won't go in the shelter unless I am with them, although the shelter is right there and that's where I put their food and water.

In spite of all those issues I have fallen in love with turkeys and want to continue raising them. I am definitely considering heritage turkeys because I want to keep them for eggs and baby poults. My question is how they compare to BBB in their survival instincts and independence? I do want to raise turkeys but I am not sure I am ready for the kind of commitment that these 6 BBB's take. Also, if someone could offer some tips on how to teach my BBB's to seek for shelter without my help (if it's possible), I'll appreciate those too.

 

[OzarkCountryGirl]

I don't know about the broad breasted, but I hatched out a batch of show quality Narragansetts last year (ended up with 6 hens and 2 toms) and when they were only 8 weeks old I turned them loose out in the goat pasture to fend for themselves, albeit under the ever watchful eyes of the livestock guardian dog. They are a year old now, all still alive and doing fine and are raising poults of their own (last clutch produced 15 poults!). While they've always had a barn they can get in to, they prefer to roost in the cedar trees even during thunderstorms and ice storms in the dead of winter (speaking of which, they had no problems surviving our minus "0 F" midwest winter outside). They don't get daily rations, only the occasional treat. And their water comes from a creek the flows year round through the property, so I don't even have to carry water to them. Despite living "in the wild" for the past 10 months, they still come running for hugs and cuddles when I call (they even know their names) as they had imprinted on me from the moment they hatched out in my dining room and that's where they lived for the first few weeks of their lives...until they started finding ways out of the brooder and following me around the house every chance they got, and they would yell for me if I left the house to go to the store, etc., which drove hubby crazy, LOL.

Oh, and this past year was my very first experience with turkeys. But I figured since turkeys have been roaming the North American woods for centuries without human intervention, surely they can't be as stupid as all the text books claim. And from what I've seen so far, I think turkeys (at least the heritage breeds) are quite intelligent. I think the problems lie with too much human intervention, commercial feeds and overfeeding, housing w/ less than adequate ventilation, medications, coddling, etc. rather than not enough.

BTW, earlier this month I bought another 2 dozen show quality Narragansett hatching eggs (shipped in from a different state) for varied bloodlines. I put the eggs in the incubator last Sunday and while I know it's a bit early I just candled them and was able to see veining and little heart beats in 10 of the eggs so far.

 

[elcarchick]

Thanks for sharing your experience OzarkCountryGirl! I wish I could achieve that kind of "turkey independence" not simply because it saves feed and work, but because I find animals and their products to be a lot healthier if they stay closer to their natural environment. With our dogs we have to make sure we actually protect our birds from them, so fences are a must and I am not sure how well we'll be able to take turkeys flying over them. I try to do rotational grazing to keep my birds moving as often as possible within our fairly small property. I do think our dogs are getting a bit better around birds but since we've had birds here for less than a year, it takes time and I will never forget one of our first chickens that they killed when she got out, so I am extra careful. Since then, we had a couple of "incidents" when either a dog got inside the chicken area or a chicken got out and we didn't have any casualties but I still wouldn't trust them.
Congratulations on your success with hatching eggs! I know how exciting it is to have new babies. My hen just hatched a few chicks yesterday (hers and mine first), so we are both super excited. Where do you buy your turkey eggs? I am also considering an option of hatching my own but I always thought that you would be lucky if any of them hatch at all, since eggs seem to be more fragile than 1-day old chicks or poults. You seem to have a good rate of success with your source.

 

[OzarkCountryGirl]

I got my eggs from the Moseley's in Arkansas. They routinely win Champion and Best of's titles for their birds. And the way they pack and ship their eggs is almost bomb proof (it's THAT good!). If you do a search on the forum, you will see their names pop up and pictures of some of their prizewinning stock.

Regarding fencing, I put the turkeys in the with goats mainly to keep them somewhat safe from predators for as long as possible. Of course it wasn't long before the turkeys found they could easily fly over the fence and have done so on a daily basis since. The boarding farm and Mark Twain National Forest is their playgournd. In saying that, I have Great Pyrenees that was born and raised with goats and poultry, so work to try and keep them and us safe from the predators. We've had our share of coyotes and bobcats pass through, and even had a mountain lion show up in the drive one evening around dusk. They don't hang around long with the dogs, though. I would never try to raise livestock or free-range birds without a LGD (Livestock Guardian Dog). If you want to go that route, make sure you get an actual LGD breed such as Great Pyrenees or Anatolian (the most common, although there is also Maremma, Komondor, Akbash, Kuvasz), or a mixture of two or more LGD breeds that have been born and raised with the animals you need it to protect. But absolutely NO non-livestock guarding breed mixed in such as Lab or shepherd, no matter how friendly. Keep in mind that a proper LGD may not be overly friendly with your pet "yard/house" dogs, and may in fact harm them if the pet dogs try to hurt or harass any of the livestock or poultry. Ours get along fine if both the LGD and the yard/house dog are together in neutral territory outside the perimeters of the fence, but if the house dog crawls through the fence and gets into the field with the livestock, especially if there are babies around, all bets are off.

Congrats on the successful hatch! You'll have to post pictures.

For me, it doesn't matter how many hatches I've had...the last one is just as exciting as the first. Must be the mommy in me, LOL. In addition to the turkey eggs, I have 120 quail eggs going in another incubator, and a little broody Silkie I have just hatched out two babies as well. In addition to all the new chicls and poults, I also had two new Tennessee Fainting goat babies born a couple of weeks ago.

 

[elcarchick]

Here is my proud momma with a few of her first chicks, not all of them hatched by the time I took that picture.


I looked for Moseley's online and haven't found much. Do they have a website or any other way to contact them?
I would love to get a LGD but with 2 labs right now our hands are full. We are managing with fences. We have a fence around the perimeter of our property (5 acres), which is also bordering a national forest (Pisgah National Forrest). Plus, I am using temporary fences within our property for rotational grazing. We have about 15 more acres outside the main fence, however, it's just very thick woods with lots of rhododendrons and no grass whatsoever on the ground. We are also thinking about getting some goats in the future, but not ready for that yet. A good way to clear the woods outside of our fence would probably be pigs - they uproot everything, which would be good for us and might start some grass growing, but it's all plans. At the moment we have some other obligations, so birds are all we can afford so far.

 

[OzarkCountryGirl]

Now that's a pretty and proud mamma hen you have there!
(I just PM'd you about the other).

Oh and an FYI on the goats...make sure you have gotten rid of all of the Rhododendrons before you turn your goats out. Rhododendrons are deadly to goats, as are Azalea plants. Poison oak/ivy and multiflora roses, on the other hand, are like candy to them.

 

[elcarchick]

Yes, she is a proud momma, and a very good one, she is really looking after them. This year I raised a couple of batches of day-old chicks and those 6 BBB poults I was writing about earlier, and I really see the difference now. I'd much rather let momma do the job lol. She knows exactly what they need and when, it makes my life so much easier and the babies' life so much happier. I don't have to watch their temperature or clean pasty butts or treat pecking woulds and separate bullies from victims. That is another reason why I want heritage turkeys, but before I can have momma-turkeys I'll have to raise more turkey poults myself which scares me because they get so dependent on me and I get so attached to them, I can't even imagine how we are going to process the ones I have now, I just hope they get mean and ugly as they get older to make the job easier lol.

Regarding goats, that's what I've been told by a local lady, and this is the reason why I am not in a hurry to get goats. She keeps hers in a paddock on alfalfa hay and supplemental grain, which in my opinion doesn't make the quality of milk that much better since most of alfalfa and most of the grain are GMO now and hay can hardly compare to fresh greens. I want my goats to get their food from nature, and if I have to supplement them occasionally I'll find good grain for them, but the main bulk needs to be fresh green matter, at least in summer. Within our fenced property we have lots of weeds and briers like blackberries and wild roses, I think those would be just fine, but outside it's just rhododendrons, those need to be cleared first, and probably pigs let in to turn over the soil and let other grasses and shrubs grow, which will take a while.

 

[OzarkCountryGirl]

I just hope they get mean and ugly as they get older to make the job easier lol.

Wishful thinking there as that rarely happens, at least for me. But while I'm wishing, I would like to live near someone who naturally raised similar type stock, then we could just do each others when it came to processing day.

My goats are in several brushy overgrown acres with a year round creek running through it. Like the turkeys, they browse and forage for their food and are all fat and sassy. The only goats that get supplement feed are the Saanen does, but only when I'm milking them as I leave their kids on them in addition to milking for us in the mornings. So I give them a little bit of feed since they are having to produce extra. If I wasn't milking them, they would be on browse like the rest of them. I don't know every plant that's within the fenceline, but what's there is all wild native (no ornamental plants) and they have such a huge variety of yummy goat-safe plants to eat that they wouldn't bother with any toxic native plant in there. The only time I lost any to plants was a few years ago when a neighbor took a few cherry branches he had pruned from his fruit tree and threw over the fence to the goats. He thought he was being nice, and didn't know that wilted cherry leaves are deadly to goats. I'd lost two by the time I learned what he'd done (just an hour later), In saying that, there are a couple of wild cherry trees in the field with the goats and they don't bother eating it. The goats that ate the cherry branches weren't hungry, but because it was something given to them by a human, they ate it without question. They are such trusting creatures.

Pigs do a wonderful job of clearing and turning over the soil. And they don't smell at all if the area is big enough. Although they've been known to eat a chicken or two if it happens to get in with them.