Heritage Turkeys, To Raise Or Not To Raise?

[americanchicks]

Hey everyone!
So I did it. My childhood dream has come true. I now own acreage and farm birds. I have chickens, ducks, and now I want to get the last bird on my bucket list turkeys.

My husband is not a fan of turkeys. He had them growing up and said they are very mean. Well doing research I found that they can be quite nice.

Im not really looking for a pet anyway. Im looking for good meat. Now that I have raised my own chickens for meat eating store bought sucks. It smells like chemicals to me. Another reason to grow dinner is some of my family members like to tease me calling me a "chicken farmer." In fact when I told them about my interest in raising heritage turkeys they laughed aloud. I like to bring a bird for Thanksgiving dinner next year that will blow them away.

Now I know that heritage are not like the broad breasteds. Smaller breast meat and they take longer to grow. What Im really looking for is flavor. I have raised CX and Red Rangers and I have to say the RR had a much better flavor.

So are heritage turkeys worth raising, and what breed do you all recommend? Are they worth it for flavor? So far Im loving the Bourbon Reds. That red and white is awesome. No matter what breed I get Im going to get a couple or BBW just for comparison.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Have you seen the Bon Appetite Test Kitchen "perfect thanksgiving turkey" video they recently produced? The first ten minutes go over the different qualities in a thanksgiving bird. It might be worth watching to get a sense for the finished product.

Here it is;

I certainly wanna raise my own someday...!

 

[nchls school]

I can't speak of flavor as my wife absolutely refuses to consider butchering any of the birds, but from what I read the flavor is supposed to be good. We have midget whites. They are friendly birds; no meaness at all. Hens mature around ten pounds and the Toms twice that. They are quite prolific hatching two to three broods each season. Clutches of eggs have been 15-18 eggs with most of them hatching. No incubator neededWe have a variety of chickens and small dogs. The turkeys get along with all.

 

[CindyinSD]

I have two BBWs (broad breasted whites) in the freezer and one thawing in the fridge. The BBWs were so sweet and cute (all toms) that I waited too, too long to process them. It was NOT fun. I could barely carry them and don’t even get me started about getting them in and out of the scalding pot—think a big sodden mop of hot, soaking wet feathers. I haven’t weighed them but I’m guessing 40-45 lbs dressed. I’ll have to drag out the bathroom scale to get some idea how long to cook them. Don’t do what I did. Don’t let them get that big. It’s just lucky I have a good-sized oven. It sure won’t fit in the turkey cooker. Not even if I diced it all up small.

I got the BBWs because I wasn’t sure my heritage turkeys would mature fast enough and I wanted one for Thanksgiving. I had heard they were delicate and so I got four. One did die for no reason I could tell, so that’s something to keep in mind. I special ordered through our farm store. If you order from a hatchery you’ll most likely have to order 15, and they are sold straight-run (unsexed). Mine ended up nearly half & half, but you could (and some do) end up with all jakes or all jennies.

I did order my heritage ones from Cackle hatchery. They sent extras, but I lost a couple to various things and now have exactly fifteen; eight males and seven females. Here are a few of them.

Narragansett jakes/toms

Narragansett jenny/hen

Bourbon Red tom/jake

I have some blacks also. I think the Narragansetts are the prettiest of the widely-available varieties. You will need to order 15 minimum and most hatcheries are going to send you extras. If you want fewer, share an order or get them through your farm store or from a local breeder.

Technically there aren’t “breeds” of turkeys. There are varieties, but turkeys are all of the breed “turkey.” I think the midget whites sound like a great idea for you if your hubby is worried about aggression. The toms can get aggressive as they mature sexually, I’ve heard. This is more likely if you make pets of them. I haven’t done that. Butchering them will be hard enough without that. I’m almost hoping they’ll start misbehaving so I won’t feel so bad about it.

Come over to “A Century of Turkey Talk” under ‘other poultry: turkeys’ in the forum section. You’ll be right at home, plus there are lots of folks there who have been raising turkeys for many years.

 

[americanchicks]

Thanks for the replies. The video was helpful, I ended up watching the whole thing. I do have someone local who raises Royal Palms and Red Bourbons. They said they will have chicks for me this spring. I am more excited to raise turkeys now. I am cooking turkey for dinner tomorrow just for our family. You know one of the free ones, Jennie-0, that you get when you spend $100. I cut it in half (like I do with my home grown chickens) so I can use the back bone for broth. The meat is gray, full of blemishes, and feels rubbery. Im thinking if a home grown turkey is anything like the Red Rangers I raised then WOW! should be yummy....

 

[mandelyn]

We've done Turkeys for 3 years now, Bourbon Red and Narragansett. Just used our new 160qt stock pot for shrink bagging, bought it after not being able to fit the turkeys in the propane fired fryer tank and had to use a 90 gallon stock tank with a wood fire. It took us 6 hours to do 2 chickens and 3 Turkeys, after accounting for how long it took to get the water hot enough in that giant tank.

These two were March hatch Narragansett, 15.1 lbs and 16 lbs. So just shy of 7 months to get that. Raised their parents, hatched the eggs, grew out the offspring and here we are. Their feed was paid for with the sale of siblings as poults. Last year, April hatch were 10-11.5 lbs. That extra month helped a lot in size and was another 15 lbs of feed to get an additional 5 pounds of weight.

They have darker dark meat, excellent texture and flavor. It's a JOB to get them processed. I was telling my husband while we were plucking that "They cost me $40 to make but I think I'd have to charge $80 for the work." I can see exactly why the processors want $15 each to do them.

This is the scald tank, it took 2.5 hours to get it to 180 degrees for using the shrink bags. The 140qt likely would have worked but in getting the 160qt I don't have to worry about getting birds that are too big for it. It's impossible to get the wing feathers out without scalding.

My favorite bird is my Bourbon Red tom. He has a lifetime reprieve. We don't have any mean Turkeys, if they get that fixated aggression at any point then they get a dinner invite and they're not used for breeding.

I raise them hands-off after teaching the babies to eat/drink. They grow up with the inclination to run from me. As they mature, they get curious. It doesn't take much to get them to be friendly, with treats and talking to them. With the boys held back from breeding, that following March when their hormones come in tells me a lot about the kind of bird they are. They can be mean. They can also be very easy going.

"Big Red" doesn't mind me at all, he'll display for me and let me grab his hens if I need to. I can pet him when he's on the roost and he's respectful when he's close to me. He'll display up to within 3 ft of me, make eye contact and then cruise away. In contrast, his dad was in the fryer by July, as soon as I had enough babies on the ground. He would come for me every chance he got and I had to go around with a big stick and my guard rooster. It's always good to have a rooster around that has your back.

 

[Frog Bog]

We used to raise turkey's on the farm. We had a flock of Standard Bronze and also raised the BBW for people who like the supermarket type birds. The BBW birds have a larger breast of course, shorter legs and shorter keel.

The Bronze turkeys were still decent. Had a good amount of both light and dark meat. I preferred the heritage over the broad breasted. The heritage turkey's had plenty of meat, more fat so the meat didn't dry out, and a deeper flavor. Still tasted like turkey, just deeper, not gamey. Hard to describe.

I've been thinking about setting up 1 acre of pasture to raise a flock of Midget Whites. The big thing with turkey's and what is holding me back from diving in again is the feed costs.We are mostly a hay production farm with veggies, eggs, and a little meat on the side. Bringing in tons of feed jacks the price of turkey's up as does having them slaughtered at a usda inspected facility. While there are some around who understand, most would rather go to Giant and get a turkey for $0.39/lb.

For your own purposes heritage turkey are just fine. Get poults in the spring and butcher in the fall. Carcass should weigh 12-18 lbs. Our jenny's averaged around 14lb slaughter weight after 8.5-9 months, Jakes a little larger.

The broad breasted birds grow much faster. They're fairly easy to raise on pasture and are only around a few months. A hoop house and electro net can contain them without needing permanent infrastructure, no feed through the winter.

 

[Molpet]

Thanks for the replies. The video was helpful, I ended up watching the whole thing. I do have someone local who raises Royal Palms and Red Bourbons. They said they will have chicks for me this spring. I am more excited to raise turkeys now. I am cooking turkey for dinner tomorrow just for our family. You know one of the free ones, Jennie-0, that you get when you spend $100. I cut it in half (like I do with my home grown chickens) so I can use the back bone for broth. The meat is gray, full of blemishes, and feels rubbery. Im thinking if a home grown turkey is anything like the Red Rangers I raised then WOW! should be yummy....

Royal Palm is a smaller size, they were developed for yard candy. RB are said to be great meat

 

[aliciaplus3]

we have been raising heritage birds for the last 3 years. We started with some eggs that were from a flock of chocolate and standard bronze running together. Some of the poults came out black and my DD fell in love with them. This past year she took several to fair and took several ribbons. This year we butchered several for Thanksgiving

the larger one dressed out at 22.25 pounds and the smaller one at 15.22 pounds.