turkeys and acorns

Wild turkeys and deer both eat acorns. In moderation they will not be toxic to your goats either. If your goats have lots of other choice things to eat, they won't focus on the acorns. I would not say that they would instinctively avoid things that are bad for them, btw...my friend found out the hard way that rhododendrons are poisonous to goats.

ETA: You might consider doing a seasonal pasture rotation between the goats and turkeys if it still worries you that they might gorge on them. The domesticated turkeys may not eat the acorns like you want, but you can count on the wild creatures cleaning them up if given enough time.
 
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Could you grind and leach them and then feed the mash to your turkeys? It would be nice and fattening but tannin free and well, free food
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I have seen nut picker upers so with one of those gathering them wouldnt be a bother, and a kitchen grinder would do the grinding job easily enough and a couple of buckets of boiling water would leach the tanins - they are poisonous, by the way - to leave a sweet rich mash.

Worth giving a try to
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I read somewhere on here that chickens have taste buds, but only a very few (my goodness, the things you read on BYC!), whereas humans would have lots and lots. My guess is turkeys are the same as chickens. And there is bitter taste, and BITTER taste.... there's a difference between acorn tannins and bitter green weeds, such as dandelion. I made flour once, as a kid, out of acorns and made pancakes with it, and it was horribly bitter, unpalatable stuff.
 
Deer, and to a lesser extent, goats and sheep have proteins in their saliva that break down the tanins in acorns. This allows some comsumption of acorns, but acorns in quantity are still toxic even to these animals ... even deer can be poisoned by acorns if it makes up too much of their diet. Cattle are ok with some acorns, but are far less tolerant of them than goats, for example.

Sorry, I don't know where turkeys rank on this. With other livestock, it's how much RPR (saliva proteins) that they have that determines how well they can consume acorns.

You're probably ok with free ranging them where they can find acorns, as long as they have plenty of other feed as well. I would not suggest feeding acorns intentionally, though, since even animals somewhat adapted to eating acorns can die of acorn poisoning if it makes up too much of their diet.
 
I've been a hunter and animal keeper all my life, ALL things in the woods eat acorns as a mainstay of their lives, deer, hogs, bears, coons, waterfowl, and yes turkeys too even a lot of predators eat then as a supplement. Kill a deer, cut it open, there will be 10 pounds of acorns in it at any given time, so as for a toxin issue, that's total busted, or wildlife would be dropping like flys from it.
WILD turkeys love them too, everyone of them I have ever killed has had a crop full of them. However, I have property similar to yours, but these domestic fowl do not know what acorns are, so they dont eat them, my Labrador does though!!!.
As for your goats and such, they'll eat the heck out of them, with no adverse effect what so ever, dont worry about it.
Ours eat the heck out of them, just get fatter is the only side effect, LOL
 
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Thanks for the input; I had read that wild turkeys do in fact take advantage of the acorn mast as a mainstay of their food supply in the fall; just hoping heritage turkeys would be clever enough to do the same. Also glad to hear there are folks who have had no issues with acorn toxicity in their goats, I'm still a little nervous about some of the info I found on the subject. There are several species of oak on the property, not sure what all of them are but there are at least 3 distinct types of acorns on the ground right now. When we add turkeys next year I will certainly update everyone on whether the domestics are smart enough to fatten on the (more than) abundant acorns here!
 
Yep,
I've ate them before straight off the ground just to see what they tasted like, but was scared to post that, thought yalled think I was crazy!! They are very bitter, she is spot on there...
 
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Deer, goats, cattle, etc. have been known to die from acorn poisoning. Usually this comes from severe early season snow storms making all other food scarce. It's more a problem in the Rockies than elsewhere, as there are types of oaks high in tannins there, and blizzards can make other food sources scarce. Acorns will poison even deer if they eat enough of them at once, expecially if they are eating nothing else. It's rare, but it happens. It's a concern with ranging cattle during the winter in some areas.

You're generally fine with ranging animals where they can find acorns, but I'd not gather acorns up and use them as feed for confined animals, for example ... expecially if they aren't getting anything else.

Edit: Just as an FYI ... the tanins in various oaks vary quite a bit ... red oak have about twice the tanins of white oak, for example. We had both where I grew up, and the wildlife always fed under the white oaks first, and settled for the red oaks when they had nothing else.
 
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Crazy??? Nawwwww..... not here on BYC! Lots of crazies on here! You remind me of my friend who was always sampling wild greens while I'd be yelling at her -- 'you're going to die!' But she had a fairly good knowledge of what she was eating before she tried it. It just freaked me out because she'd say "I think this such and such edible weed" and I was like, what, you're not sure?
 

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