Keeping chickens & turkeys together?

[Haloclimb]

Hi all,
My mum and I were just wondering, is it possible to keep turkeys & chickens in the same coop? We'd love to get a turkey hen to fatten up for christmas (I'd love to get a breeding pen...but mums a bit scared of the big toms!) but we don't have another coop to keep one in. However, the coop we have at the moment is a renovated shed, so it's pretty big, and we have wooden roosts on one side and nesting boxes on the other. We have about 15 chickens in there at the moment, with two of those being roosters (but one is so submissive he might as well be a hen!)
We let our chickens out to free-range all day, and they have plenty of space to roam around in. My question is, would a female turkey start attacking the chickens? Would it bully the others or attack the almost fully grown silkie chick we have? Some of our hens are pretty small, but not at bantam size. How likely would it be that the chickens would, at the very least, tolerate a turkey?

Does anyone have any experiences with keeping turkeys and chickens together? I'm not sure what the state of blackhead is where I live, so I'm looking that up as we speak.

 

[frank53061]

This is what I did I took eggs from my Chickens and incubated them so they would be the same age as the Poults that I received in the Mail.
I raised them together and at over 13 weeks are doing great my experience this helps to raise them together I think it keeps the Poults on track eating and drinking black head is not a problem were I live back in the sticks so far LOL.
At 12 weeks of age I started to allow my Pullets and Turkeys to free range with my older chickens supervised and has worked out well.
As far as Toms being mean I think spending time with Fowl of any kind makes friendlier birds and essayer to take care of.


I have turkeys that want to jump up in my lap now and want there belly's scratched LOL this might not be so good when they are 15 to 20 pounds LOL turkeys are more like dogs with feathers when you raise then from Poults and spend time with them each day.
more than one turkey is better because One TOM and no hens the Tom may try to mate with a Chicken and kill it plus Turkeys are social animals.
The older Chickens at this time mostly ignores the Turkeys.
The Pullets and Turkeys that were raised together hang tight together for the most part.

Best of luck to you.

 

[nstilwater]

i keep a tom and two hens with my chickens, and i have too roos in there, after some confusion over who is supposed to mate with who they seem to have figured it out ad pretty much stay to their ownkind, the only problem i have is one of the turkey hens doesnt like one of my roosters and if he comes near thehen she calls for the tom and he comes over and struts around, seems to deter the rooster cause he learned his lesson when they were young......dont mess with the turkeys! i even added the turkeys to the already established flock, it should be ok as long as there is plenty of room for everyone to get away

 

[Haloclimb]

Thanks for the replies everyone! Thats another weight off for when we get turkeys, i hopefully won't have to worry about the chickens and the turkeys fighting when we let them free range