- Apr 8, 2011
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Hiya. I got it into my head that I want to raise my own Christmas turkey this year. I've got the incubator issue sorted (finally) and have ordered my eggs. Here's the problem:
Up until October, my chickens free ranged over the entire garden. They totally trashed it so I penned them up. They've now got about 10m2 of outdoor space which suits them well (although they do still give me the evil eye when I'm gardening out there
)
While reading up on turkey care, I inadvertently stumbled across "blackhead" and apparently you mustn't keep turkeys and chickens together as chicken worm eggs incubate a nasty parasite that if ingested by a turkey, is always fatal. Apparently there is no treatment for this disease, called Blackhead. The parasite can live in worm eggs for up to four years so therefore you shouldn't keep turkeys on land that's had chickens on it in the last four years. I read briefly about "quicklime" dusting runs etc if there's an outbreak of blackhead to reduce contamination. Does this mean that if I dust the land I've got in mind for the turkeys with quicklime, that they'll be ok? I don't worm my chickens nearly often enough so I can't even rest assured that they wouldn't have been pooping out worm eggs. But then there's no guarantee that they'll have ingested this parasite either...
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
TIA
Jo x
Up until October, my chickens free ranged over the entire garden. They totally trashed it so I penned them up. They've now got about 10m2 of outdoor space which suits them well (although they do still give me the evil eye when I'm gardening out there
While reading up on turkey care, I inadvertently stumbled across "blackhead" and apparently you mustn't keep turkeys and chickens together as chicken worm eggs incubate a nasty parasite that if ingested by a turkey, is always fatal. Apparently there is no treatment for this disease, called Blackhead. The parasite can live in worm eggs for up to four years so therefore you shouldn't keep turkeys on land that's had chickens on it in the last four years. I read briefly about "quicklime" dusting runs etc if there's an outbreak of blackhead to reduce contamination. Does this mean that if I dust the land I've got in mind for the turkeys with quicklime, that they'll be ok? I don't worm my chickens nearly often enough so I can't even rest assured that they wouldn't have been pooping out worm eggs. But then there's no guarantee that they'll have ingested this parasite either...
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
TIA
Jo x