Turkey Questions

[dani2]

Hi,

We are raising turkeys for the first time this year and I have a few questions ours are now about a month old or so and are currently confined to the barn. We have everything around here pretty much free range and are hoping to do the same with the turkeys. I am wondering are turkeys pretty good at putting them self to bed at night like the chickens do? I have noticed these guys are much more curious about going and doing things the chickens we raised last year took weeks to even explore the other half of there stall in the barn the turkeys are already bouncing off the walls

Also the few full grown turkeys I have seen on farms are usually fairly fat and just kind of walk around and hang out how common is it for domestic turkeys to fly? With as much energy as they have now I am starting to think I need to be concerned about them flying over our pasture fences. Thanks in advance Nicki

 

[reallemons1]

Ours free ranged the barn yard and around the house. Flying depends a lot on breed and age. Broad breasted breeds don't fly as much and have a harder time excaping predators. Heritage breeds are better as free range and are good flyers. At least this is so with ours.

 

[dani2]

The six we have right now are bronze we also have a bunch in the incubator which are mostly royal palms I am thinking both of these breeds would be considered broad breasted but I could be wrong? I dont have to worry to much about predators with the exception of neighborhood cats but once they are to big for the cats to cause any trouble we have a double fence system which seems to keep the coyotes away. We do have owls but nothing big enough to even hurt my chickens so I am not worried about the turkeys.

 

[sue3]

We hatched out some heritage turkeys last summer. We decided at about 3 months that they were old enough to let out of the barn to free range. They loved it but the problem we had was that since they were so tame and used to seeing us, that they all started coming up to hang around the house ( steps, sidewalk, yard ) and with 11 of them their droppings rapidly started building up. Not much fun with that many birds. The hens would also fly up on the back porch roof too. We had always let our chickens free range but did not ever have this sort of problem with them. We finally had to pen them up near the barn since we did not want to live with a layer of turkey dropping to walk through to get into the house. We did find out though that if we kept the toms penned the hens could come out to free range as it was the toms that like to hang around by the house to display for us. The hens would then stay down near the barn then too. They can be pretty easily "herded around" too by walking slowly behind them with a long stick, hoe, etc. and your other arm out and in the direction that you want them to go. Our young toms did start fighting each other very aggressively at about 6-7 months and we did have to seperate some of them at that point. We love our turkeys though and would not want to give them up! They have been much fun to watch and gentle birds with us.

 

[reallemons1]

Bronze are usually broad breasted, Royal Palms are not.

 

[MissPrissy]

Bronze comes standard and broad breasted. Broad breasted cannot mate normally and require AI. If you have those eggs in the bator without AI then you have a form of standard bronze. It seems to me you may have the terms broad breasted and heritage confused here.

 

[thewarriorchild]

Our Tom likes to go on our roof all of a sudden, been up there two days one time, This isnt good. They get herded inside at night if need be, but they have been perching inside the pen. I need a way to keep him off the roof. I also need more roosting room but have not been able to get to that just yet. They free range when we are around. We did not raise them from babies but they hang around the house and do not go to far. I havent seen them fly and the Tom doesnt have to fly a whole wall to get to the roof just half because of a wall. I have 3 beautiful Bourbon reds

 

[luvsmycritters]

i own 7 turkeys right now and only one is a tom . you would think i would have a ton of babys running around . but since he is not a hertiage breed i'm turkey poop out of luck (lol) he can't breed . so i have a huge turkey that would like to have a relationship with the ladies but can't can anyone see therapy in the future for this guy ........... i can lol

i wish i would have looked into before i bought them .

 

[MissPrissy]

Quote:
What breed is he? Not being a heritage breed doesn't mean he can't breed. The ones that can't breed naturally are the broad breasted and they don't live much beyond a year - same as broiler chickens. Male turkeys are big no matter their breed. Heritage breeds usually refer to the females going broody and hatching their own poults. Just like a chicken you have to have a female, with fertile eggs, that wants to sit and is naturally inclined to hatch out the eggs.

Crack a few of eggs and look for the bullseye on the yolk. You maybe surprised and find you have fertile eggs if that tom is not a BB variety.

 

[luvsmycritters]

he is a bb tom. it was one of my many learning lessons ( the hard way)