Turkey Poults Flip Over Syndrome-F.O.S.-My experience and what I did.

[Frosty]

Steves's reputation is built on the quality of his stock. In nature, only the strongest survive and breed, any little 'flippers' wouldn't survive the first round of cuts. Any birds that develop other issues such as sinus problems wouldn't make it, either. These are all poults and older birds that aren't as genetically sound and hardy, so they would weaken the whole group if they went on to reproduce. Now, Steve could do the work to save these birds and sell them as culls, but the buyer could look and think they are fine looking birds, no reason not to breed them! They breed, and produce poults with the same problems. Then these folks (who were told that these birds shouldn't be used as breeders) would go on to tell others that they got these birds from Steve and that the poults that they produced were really crappy and that Steve produces bad birds. Then Steve's reputation would take a hit because folks are more willing to spread bad stuff than good... Bottom line, if you are raising turkeys just for your own pleasure and won't be selling poults (at least not 'these' poults), I wouldn't worry. But if you are breeding and selling, these poults aren't the strongest and best. Mother Nature would cull them.

 

[kuntrygirl]

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Thanks.

I agree with Alexander. Just wait a day or 2 and see what happens.

 

[ScaredOfShadows]

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Frosty, I agree with you. When you are breeding birds and selling them, honest or not - you have to think what is best for your own flock as well as any potential customer's flock and what those culls may do to your reputation. If you are strictly breeding for yourself - pets or self sustaining for food/eggs then theres not that issue there. However breeding unsound animals tends to lead to producing more unsound animals.

Turkeys are already known to be hard to raise to an extent, but by keeping flippers and adding them to breeding programs and selling their eggs and poults or even the flipper poults themselves, you are giving your 'kind hearted good deed' to someone else where it is just going to be a headache or a heartache depending on the person. You aren't helping to strengthen the species/breed, you are just sustaining a problem.

Same as when you help chicks and poults out of eggs, those birds aren't strong enough to finish hatching - now its different if you goofed and all the water dried up and its like the sahara in there, so you mist the egg, and pull off the dried bits around the corners of the hole...that was your error, and as such created an issue for the hatching baby - but I still wont crack the egg open more and help it out. - I did it once with my first bator experience and resulted in a very poorly chick that I eventually had to cull when it wasn't getting better...and I know it was because it wasn't meant to ever come out of that egg - it was too weak and had issues with its legs if it weren't for me it would have given up and died - and not had to suffer and struggle for another 10 days or so.

I personally have no issue with a pet owner raising their animals and saving those that tug on the heartstrings - but just don't sell to others. - because you are making it their issue as well when they probably didn't want the problems is all I'm saying.

 

[NYRIR]

I agree...it's disheartening to see them suffer.For myself? If it's a laying hen for eggs...or for my own personal usage for meat...I would try and save it.If I even THINK there's a chance I'd want to sell? I couldn't do it....I think I'd have to be sure to band the ones with problems so I know who they are and only use those for my own family and not for breeding purposes.
I have learned so much on here about poultry in general...now I can see Steve's point of view....it's worse for the species in the long run.I don't like that fact....but it is true.

I think people just have to think about it...and be responsible about what they use those birds for later.
That said....I'll probably end up with some "useless" birds too....as I HATE culling and try to only do so if it's ABSOLUTELY necessary!Guess I'm a softie too

Good post Kuntrygirl....and good job with those poults

 

[Oregon Blues]

I can't see any reason to not save weak poults, as long as they don't go into the breeding program.

Don't most of us plan to invite our lesser birds to dinner one night? A poult that flips onto its back can be a perfectly golden brown, lying on it's back, on the carving board in November.

Denninmi, it will help if you stop with the salt in your formula. Salt poisons poultry.

 

[kuntrygirl]

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Thank you. I don't use my poults for any "breeding programs" so that's why I try my best to save my animals. In my little small town, we are just plain ole country folks who like to have animals in the chicken yard the same way our grandparents and great grandparents did when we were young. So even though some of my poults had the flip over syndrome and my Tom has suffered with a respiratory problem (like soooooooo many other owners whether they know or not) and wry neck, I still tell those who want to purchase my turkeys about these problems. Believe it or not, they don't care but I do not sell my turkeys anymore because I am trying to work with my Tom and his problem although people don't care and they just want my poults. I know that eventually, I will have to get rid of ALL of my turkeys and bring in a new flock from an entirely new line/gene pool, so that I can start all over again.

I just wanted to add, that I mentioned on another post how those of us know that our poultry or other animals are sick because we do get "professional" testing (vet visits) or we know through observations of signs and symptoms and we get our animals treated and we share with others our experience and outcomes. There are other owners whose animals die for no apparent reason and they have NO IDEA why their chicken or turkey died and many don't have the money (and this is totally understandable and no blame or pointing finders at any owners) to take their animal/pet to a vet or specialist to determine the cause of death, they continue to sell baby chicks or poults from this same breeding line. Many of these owners "write off" these "sudden deaths" and "unknown causes" or they "guess" that the reason is because of a heart attack, heat stroke (or whatever cause that maw maw, paw paw or the next door neighbor as explained to them) and these are just a couple of reasons, when in fact their chicken or turkey has actually died from a respiratory problem or some other contagious problem.

Information that was explained to me by an avian specialist indicates that all respiratory problems are contagious and other birds can get it. Many owners DO NOT know their animals have a respiratory problem until they have had it for days. The avian specialist has explained that a respiratory problem is a "silent disease", so before an owner sees and recognizes the signs, it is too late because their bird has already been in contact with the other flock and although you remove the birds, the others could have possibly contracted the disease. So then you have the problem being passed on to others. Some of the other birds may be immuned to the disease and may not show any problems EVER. So, then this is passed on thru the egg and then so on and so forth. You get the picture. And this information is from the words of an avian specialist that I spoke to personally.

So for those of us that are doing our parts to treat our animals and sharing this information with potential buyers, I wonder how can we get the others to jump on board to get their dead animals tested, so that they can share this information with potential buyers. If this doesn't happen then we are still placing all of these birds who are carriers with other flocks, so this cycle will never end.

So, a buyer that is going to a seller's house to buy a chicken or turkey may be purchasing a bird from someone who had a chicken or turkey to die weeks or months earlier from a respiratory problem or flip over syndrome and the owner was not aware. So the seller is selling this chicken or turkey to the buyer "not knowing" he is selling a sick bird or a carrier. And at no blame to the seller, the poor seller just doesn't know why that chicken or turkey died of a "sudden death" or why the poor poult keeps flipping over. So this potential carrier is taken back to the buyer's home and placed in his flock of chicken and/or turkeys to breed with others and then the cycle starts all over again.

So for those of you who are taking the time to care for your animals like a responsible pet owner, I applaud you for all of your hard work and efforts.

I think for the most part we all try our best to do the right thing to care for our dear animals. I don't think anyone on BYC is neglectful in caring for their animals. I don't believe that many people out there purposely try to do under handed and careless things to sabotage a person's flock (but there are some out there who do). I think that we do the best that we can. Many of us are always on BYC trying to ask questions and read and learn, which is the first step in caring for and treating our animals.

So again, I applaud everyone here for being responsible and posting questions and offering suggestions. There are many of you who are more experienced than me and others on the board and I always appreciative and am VERY grateful for ALL of the information that you have posted. I have learned soooo much from you all and this site. There will be times when a few of us won't see eye to eye but that happens in life, not just on the BYC board.

Our main purpose and goal is to come here and learn, learn, learn and help, help, help.

I appreciate everyone on this site who has helped me in helping my animals.

 

[Frosty]

So for those of us that are doing our parts to treat our animals and sharing this information with potential buyers, I wonder how can we get the others to jump on board to get their dead animals tested, so that they can share this information with potential buyers. If this doesn't happen then we are still placing all of these birds who are carriers with other flocks, so this cycle will never end.

I think part of the problem is that there are a LOT of us here who can't take our poultry to the vet because no vets around will see them. We have 3 local vet offices. 2 are strictly for pets, the other is livestock. If you call the pet vets, they tell you to call the livestock vet. If you call the livestock vet, they tell you to call the pet vet. It's frustrating... and as far as having a necropsy on a dead poult/turkey? I looked into that when I got 15 poults from a hatchery and they were all dying one by one. I called the state lab where the testing would have been done, it's a 4 hour drive to get there. They wanted a 'fresh dead' poult (as in kill one of the remaining 3 that I had left), express mail it on dry ice, and pay $75 for basic tests. If they had to look harder, it would cost more and no guarantee that they would find anything. They don't want a poult that was found dead in the brooder, they want one killed and immediately packed on dry ice. I decided not to do that, one more did die and the other two were for our own consumption. I didn't find what was wrong but I did make a guess that it was possibly botulism since when the box of poults arrived there was one very dead poult in there (as in it stunk so bad I had to dispose of it before I even put the box in the vehicle) and several died that first day.

So you see, for many of us it isn't a case of we don't get them tested, it's a case of we can't.​

 

[kuntrygirl]

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I think part of the problem is that there are a LOT of us here who can't take our poultry to the vet because no vets around will see them. We have 3 local vet offices. 2 are strictly for pets, the other is livestock. If you call the pet vets, they tell you to call the livestock vet. If you call the livestock vet, they tell you to call the pet vet. It's frustrating... and as far as having a necropsy on a dead poult/turkey? I looked into that when I got 15 poults from a hatchery and they were all dying one by one. I called the state lab where the testing would have been done, it's a 4 hour drive to get there. They wanted a 'fresh dead' poult (as in kill one of the remaining 3 that I had left), express mail it on dry ice, and pay $75 for basic tests. If they had to look harder, it would cost more and no guarantee that they would find anything. They don't want a poult that was found dead in the brooder, they want one killed and immediately packed on dry ice. I decided not to do that, one more did die and the other two were for our own consumption. I didn't find what was wrong but I did make a guess that it was possibly botulism since when the box of poults arrived there was one very dead poult in there (as in it stunk so bad I had to dispose of it before I even put the box in the vehicle) and several died that first day.

So you see, for many of us it isn't a case of we don't get them tested, it's a case of we can't.

I agree and I totally understand. I'm not debating the don'ts and can'ts. That is why I specifically said in my post the following:

There are other owners whose animals die for no apparent reason and they have NO IDEA why their chicken or turkey died and many don't have the money (and this is totally understandable and no blame or pointing finders at any owners) to take their animal/pet to a vet or specialist to determine the cause of death, they continue to sell baby chicks or poults from this same breeding line.

And I will say AGAIN, this is totally understandable and no blame or pointing finders at any owners. I have talked to a few other people on BYC and they have said the same thing about the lab wanting a 'fresh dead' poult. I can imagine that this is a hard thing to do in order to find out if the flock has any diseases or if the 'fresh dead' poult is/was a carrier. It's just a lot involved. There will never be solution to this problem, so all we can do is the best that we can.

I read many posts on the Emergencies/Illnesses/Injury threads about someone finding their chicken dead the next day and not knowing the cause and the owners are still selling babies, hens and roosters. So are they possibly selling a bird that is a carrier of "something"? Maybe not? Who knows. That's why I said the cycle will never end. It's just a vicious cycle that we will always be faced with. There is no answer to this problem.

I have decided to be more careful IF I ever have to purchase anything from anyone and I probably never will. You just never know what you're getting.

For me, I'm leaning more towards a hatchery for my next turkeys.​

 

[NYRIR]

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I would have to recommend (if you get shipped poults,of course if you get eggs....you should get Steve's

) , Cackle....I ordered 18 and got an extra BR, all arrived within a day of shipping and all are alive and well.I so far have had no issues with any and they were hatched April 25th.Very healthy looking poults.I was impressed with them

I also in that order got 6 ducklings...also alive and well.

 

[kuntrygirl]

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I would have to recommend (if you get shipped poults,of course if you get eggs....you should get Steve's

) , Cackle....I ordered 18 and got an extra BR, all arrived within a day of shipping and all are alive and well.I so far have had no issues with any and they were hatched April 25th.Very healthy looking poults.I was impressed with them

I also in that order got 6 ducklings...also alive and well.

Thank you for the information!!!! I appreciate that. I don't have an incubator, so I wouldn't be able to purchase eggs. With my luck and all of the problems that I read about hatching eggs, I would probably fry the poor eggs to a crisp.

I will take your advice on that and order from Cackle. I have ordered from them about 5 years ago when I wanted a few bantam chicks (25) and they put in an extra 5 chicks. All chicks arrived healthy and happy. I always thought that Cackle was a great place to order from as well.

Thanks again!