Thinking about raising some turkeys this year...help please

[Olive Hill]

Honestly, raising heritage turkeys to get a feel for BBW is like raising some leghorns to get a feel for what it'll be like to raise Cornish X. There is no comparison. BBW/BBB are the cornish X of the turkey world. If you want to raise them, that's fine. But a few heritage toms aren't going to give you even an inkling of what raising them will be like. My advice would be to decide what you want -- do you want to raise BBW/BBB or heritage? And then pick a FEW of THAT type of turkey to start with. If you want to raise BBW/BBB then pick up a FEW BBW/BBB and that will give you an intro to whether or not it's something you want to do.

 

[pdpatch]

jack & mommy's duckies :

Maybe I should ask this........

How safe is it to let them free range and sleep with ducks and geese??? Maybe I should test the water with a heritage breed first. People are always needing homes for toms/jakes. And get just one or two and see what it is like and go big next year.

The Aunties will just have to wait another year for free turkeys

We always free range to some extent, last year the BBB were let out first thing in the morning, the layers got let out around noon. The only problem was the the top 5 or so layers in the pecking order would pick on the turkeys. The rest would always hang out with the turkeys because they always found to good stuff to eat. The turkeys were the watch dogs of the flock, they would issue alerts and the chicken would go running for cover.

As far as mixing Turkeys and duck/geese it depends on if you you have a pool for the Ducks/Geese to swim in. Wet areas are hard on BBB turkeys because of desiese that are usually but not always present. It also can cause respiratory problems.

Tom​