How did you get started with Turkeys and what breed do you like?

[Celie]

Since it is 91 degrees right now with 83% humidity (heat index is 104

) here in Southeast Louisiana, it is just too hot to do much outside today, I thought I could get some input on how everyone got started with Turkeys and why you raise the particular breed you do?
This is my second year with Turkeys and I went from the Giant BB whites to Holland whites, after they started laying infertile eggs and I discovered they had to be AI. I now have 8 adult gobblers (fattening up 6 for the freezer, YUM !! ) and 2 hens and 24 young poults. Hens stopped laying after summer sultsus, and wish I had hatched out more. Everybody I meet, wants some. Do you also find such a demand for Turkey eggs and Poults?
I would really like to here from all you Turkey raisers out there. Any suggestions and advise would also be appreciated!

,

Celie

 

[cchardwick]

Well I haven't bought my first turkey egg yet but I can tell you why I'm going to buy some. I'm trying to be a self sufficient as possible, you can say I'm somewhat of a survivalist. I have chickens to feed my family in tough times. I used to butcher my chickens but I found that I can sell a chicken for ten bucks around here, even if it's several years old. And I can buy a whole chicken at King Soopers for five bucks! So for me it's better to sell them after a few years when the eggs start to decline and buy more.

This year I bought 20 pullets and spent $160 for my flock. So I decided to buy an incubator and hatch my own eggs to save money and eliminate the reliance on other breeders selling chicks. I searched high and low and finally decided on a very high end incubator, the RCOM 20 Pro with USB. That cost me $700 but I figure it will pay itself off after a few years and if I ever get out of breeding I can rent it out or sell it, so a good investment overall.

Anyway, the incubator that I bought has a 'Turkey' setting so I was thinking of getting some turkeys. I found videos where turkeys and chickens would run together and started shopping for turkey eggs. I found that just the fertilized eggs can sell for ten dollars each! For me this would be a fantastic money maker for tough times such as when I'm unemployed, so another plus in my book.

I've also seen places the sell the turkey tail feathers for a dollar each! I'm a business man at heart and anything that can make me money is a plus, especially during long term unemployment which I've had before. So I looked for a breed of turkey that has pretty tail feathers and I found the 'Black Winged Bronze Turkey'. I found a breeder that sell the eggs for $3.50 and apparently these turkeys breed true and don't need AI. My plan is to get my incubator in the mail next week and get these turkeys next spring as my first attempt at something other than chickens:



Plum Run Poultry raises Black Winged Bronze turkeys, Black Winged Bronze turkey poults, Black Winged Bronze turkey hatching eggs, and Black Winged Bronze turkey feathers for sale to the public.

The Black Winged Bronze Turkey is a very beautiful turkey. The difference between the Black Winged Bronze and the Bronze is that the Black Winged Bronze has solid flight and secondaries that are black, and the Bronze has Barring in the wings. They originated in Texas. They were called Crimson Dawn by the creator, because of the crimson bronze color that shows up when they are in the sunlight. This is a true breeding variety. The weights for these birds is 36 lbs. for the toms and 20 lbs. for the hens.

 

[frank53061]

If you have some double breasted hens you know there is a good probability you could get a single breasted Tom and possibly get some fertile eggs of course they would be a cross breed.
I got my Poults early Spring I think that worked the best for me.
My area Poults are hard to come by unless you order them in the mail or drive 3 hours to get them.
Poults are kind of fragile and getting them during a high temp time I don't know if that would be stressful to them or not.
I know we are having a break in the temps here with today being in the 70s and my Turkeys are loving it.
I let them out this morning to free range and they have been gobbling there little heads off non stop LOL.
Good Luck.

 

[Celie]

If you have some double breasted hens you know there is a good probability you could get a single breasted Tom and possibly get some fertile eggs of course they would be a cross breed.
I got my Poults early Spring I think that worked the best for me.
My area Poults are hard to come by unless you order them in the mail or drive 3 hours to get them.
Poults are kind of fragile and getting them during a high temp time I don't know if that would be stressful to them or not.
I know we are having a break in the temps here with today being in the 70s and my Turkeys are loving it.
I let them out this morning to free range and they have been gobbling there little heads off non stop LOL.
Good Luck.

The first poults I bought from a hatchery where I had bought some chicks. They sent me an e-mail that they had large BB Turkey poults on sale as day old straight run poults, very cheap. I had seen them in my local feed store, too and was thinking about getting some, when I got the email. I bought the min. which was 15. They did great and grew very very fast. I lost a couple to over eating, my first mistake in feeding. As they grew, I found out how much a Turkey could eat and how big these birds could get. We had to harvest them with the tractor to pick up their tremendous bodies for bleeding out . The last Toms we harvested were 80+ pounds on foot. I weighted one of the breasts that I deboned to grind for ground turkey and there was 35 # of breast meat alone. I also made a lot of sausage, too. The problem with them was that half of them died of a heart attack or went lame from the tremendous weight. My bad, before I learned they would eat themselves to death, like Cornish rock broiler chickens. You can feed them all they want for about 10 to 12 hours a day, but can't leave them to eat all they want from a feeder. I kept a couple of females and a male to see it I could mate them the next spring. The first dozen eggs or so I gathered were fertile, before the toms grew too large to mount the females and I discovered that they needed to be AL. That would have been OK, and I would have raised each year's fertile eggs, restricting feed and only keeping the hens and using younger males for mating, but most of the poults were not double breasted and some had sunken inn breasts! In reading further about the BB White hybrids, I found out that they were bred from Holland Whites which originated in Mexico, and that the HW's were the commercial meat Turkeys of choice until 1935, when they developed the BBW's. I also looked at the size of other Turkeys mentioned in catalogs and decided these were the biggest that were natural pure bred, except for the standard bronze, so I went with them, being white feathers make a cleaner looking bird when plucked.
Thanks for your post,
Celie

 

[Celie]

Well I haven't bought my first turkey egg yet but I can tell you why I'm going to buy some. I'm trying to be a self sufficient as possible, you can say I'm somewhat of a survivalist. I have chickens to feed my family in tough times. I used to butcher my chickens but I found that I can sell a chicken for ten bucks around here, even if it's several years old. And I can buy a whole chicken at King Soopers for five bucks! So for me it's better to sell them after a few years when the eggs start to decline and buy more.

This year I bought 20 pullets and spent $160 for my flock. So I decided to buy an incubator and hatch my own eggs to save money and eliminate the reliance on other breeders selling chicks. I searched high and low and finally decided on a very high end incubator, the RCOM 20 Pro with USB. That cost me $700 but I figure it will pay itself off after a few years and if I ever get out of breeding I can rent it out or sell it, so a good investment overall.

Anyway, the incubator that I bought has a 'Turkey' setting so I was thinking of getting some turkeys. I found videos where turkeys and chickens would run together and started shopping for turkey eggs. I found that just the fertilized eggs can sell for ten dollars each! For me this would be a fantastic money maker for tough times such as when I'm unemployed, so another plus in my book.

I've also seen places the sell the turkey tail feathers for a dollar each! I'm a business man at heart and anything that can make me money is a plus, especially during long term unemployment which I've had before. So I looked for a breed of turkey that has pretty tail feathers and I found the 'Black Winged Bronze Turkey'. I found a breeder that sell the eggs for $3.50 and apparently these turkeys breed true and don't need AI. My plan is to get my incubator in the mail next week and get these turkeys next spring as my first attempt at something other than chickens:



Plum Run Poultry raises Black Winged Bronze turkeys, Black Winged Bronze turkey poults, Black Winged Bronze turkey hatching eggs, and Black Winged Bronze turkey feathers for sale to the public.

The Black Winged Bronze Turkey is a very beautiful turkey. The difference between the Black Winged Bronze and the Bronze is that the Black Winged Bronze has solid flight and secondaries that are black, and the Bronze has Barring in the wings. They originated in Texas. They were called Crimson Dawn by the creator, because of the crimson bronze color that shows up when they are in the sunlight. This is a true breeding variety. The weights for these birds is 36 lbs. for the toms and 20 lbs. for the hens.

Beautiful birds, thanks for the pics!
I try to raise most of what we eat, in our 100% organic garden, small orchard, and animals. I am too old to tend to large animals like cows or goats, etc. so i keep chickensm ducks, Turkeys and meat rabbits. I would like to grow more of my own feed, but the rabbits eat whatever comes out of the veggie garden that we do not eat ourselves. I am working on growing enough to not have to buy rabbit feed, since it is the most expensive around here. I have New Zealand White rabbits, 8 does and 2 bucks and they give me a lot more meat than poultry does for the amount of feed they eat. Also rabbits can exist, if need be, on grass and hay. As a survivalist, you might want to look into rabbits, as a protien sourse to feed your family. They also give you more meat much faster, 16 weeks from birth to frypan! I raise new Zealand because of their superior taste and very small bones for the amount of meat they produce.
I have heard of crafters using Pheasent feathers, interesting to hear they also use turkey feathers. I know they used them for quill pens, back in the day, but it is hard to find a fountain pen these days! Nice to hear they are a nice large bird, but I would expect you will get more than 20# females, if the males get 36#'s, mine are closer in size than what I was told, too. I heard 35# toms and 25# hens, but the toms are more like 45# and the hens 35# for my Holland whites. Also, do not beleive the old wives tale about turkeys being dumb, they are very smart birds. Mine learned to open the pull thread on their feed bags, and the covers to the rabbit feeders, if they can reach them!
Thanks for the post and good luck with your Poults in the spring. Please let me know how it turns out?
Celie

 

[frank53061]

Celie I did not know that you could breed a Double Breasted Tom before they got to big that's some new information I will have to stick back in my memory.
That is amazing that a Turkey could get that big that's a lot of Turkey sausage.
I have not yet eaten any of my Red Bourbons but from what I have read that the Turkey was bread for the taste and well as a clean looking skin when plucked others here with more experience could probably say for sure.
Thanks again for the great information.

 

[NYREDS]

A technical point: there is only one breed of Turkey with a number of varieties.

 

[CrosshairsFarm]

For the little farmer, like myself one of the heritage birds would be best. They can reproduce with no help and are good broods and mothers. I myself raise Midget White Turkeys more white meat. The Bourbon is a good heritage bird with more muscle, meaning more dark meat which is healthier for oneself. Look up on line about the heritage breeds, There are about 10 left and all on the endangered list. Do not make good commercial birds, therefore only the little guys like myself can save and enjoy these birds.

 

[Lagerdogger]

I got started with a few hens so we could have our own eggs. Pretty soon we had 50 hens. Then we started raising meat chickens for ourselves, and pretty soon we were raising 100 to 150 of them. We sold extras to our neighbors and friends, and do a little bartering for vegetables.

Anyway, whenever I looked through poultry catalogs, I was always attracted to the heritage turkeys. So for fun one year, I ordered about 20. I made a large fenced in range for them, and loved them immensely (I'm pretty sure I spelled immensely wrong). I had royal palms, bourbon red, standard bronzes, and narragansetts. I really thought I wanted golden phoenix, which is not a recognized breed (breed, color, variety....whatever). To get golden phoenix, I had to learn a little about turkey genetics, which is not that complicated. So I developed a plan and started breeding turkeys.

I found that I cannot make any money raising heritage turkeys for food because it cost me over $5 per butchered pound, and I can't get people to pay more than $4.50. So I am raising BB bronze to subsidize my heritage addiction. Addiction is never pretty.

Anyway, starting with a royal palm tom and a bourbon red hen, I have produced narragansett, golden narragansett, red bronze, standard bronze, royal palm, calico, and sweetgrass turkeys (all with some hidden recessive genes), but have yet to get a for-sure golden phoenix. I have one golden narragansett tom whose wings aren't really barred, but they aren't really black either. I'm hoping as it gets older, its wings will become less ambiguous. (A golden phoenix is basically a black-winged golden narragansett with a grey gene). If I could get a black-winged narragansett and a red palm, I would be in business because all of their offspring would be golden phoenix. But I'm a pretty small hobby farm and can only keep two toms and two to four hens for breeding, so I don't hatch a lot of birds every year.

That's my turkey story, and I'm sticking to it.



About the breed vs variey thing. Some people (maybe most) argue that turkey varieties are like colors in labrador retrievers. All labs are the same breed, but some are yellow, some are black, amd some are chocolate. You can predict ratios of different colored offspring if you know the background of the parents. This is true of turkey colors as well. However, different turkey colors also have different secondary characteristics. Some are larger (st bronze), some have differently shaped breast meat (royal palm), some have heavier breasts and shorter legs (white holland). These secondary traits seem to be closely linked to colors, because they are heritable like colors. For example, a standard bronze turkey is larger than most other colors, whether its parents were standard bronze or if it was the result of crossing other colors, even royal palms (You can get a st. bronze colored bird by crossing a RP tom to a BR hen, and crossing the resulting red bronze tom to a royal palm hen. Even though this st bronze bird is "3/4 royal palm," it's still a large turkey.) My point is that these secondary charactertics can make the different colors seem to be different breeds of a single species...turkey. I think the differences in turkeys is more complicated than color of a dog breed, but turkeys aren't as different from each other as say, labradors and chihuahuas. So, while "varieties" is probably a better descriptor than "breeds", it doesn't bother me a bit to hear people talk about turkey breeds.

The more I think about, the more I think that the fact that these secondary characteristics can be restored by continued cross-varietizing probably supports the variety argument over the breed argument. But it still doesn't bother me to talk about heritage breeds rather than heritage varieties.

 

[Stephanie739]

For the little farmer, like myself one of the heritage birds would be best. They can reproduce with no help and are good broods and mothers. I myself raise Midget White Turkeys more white meat. The Bourbon is a good heritage bird with more muscle, meaning more dark meat which is healthier for oneself. Look up on line about the heritage breeds, There are about 10 left and all on the endangered list. Do not make good commercial birds, therefore only the little guys like myself can save and enjoy these birds.

I haven't gotten my first turkeys yet, but I am leaning towards midget whites and bourbon reds. Both are heritage breeds (reproduce naturally) and I've read they have fantastic tasting meat. I don't eat much meat, but turkey is my favorite! I will probably buy my first poults early spring 2013. I do like to incubate eggs, but I prefer letting the broody hens take care of babies. Bourbon reds are good moms so I hear...

I need to practice processing chickens. I haven't done it yet.