turkeys in thailand

[dude92627]

took me a minute to figure out how to post photos on here but i it done. one hen was sitting on eggs when i got back but they weren't any good. the tom struts a lot but i've never seen him do the deed. on the way in i stopped and checked out another big tom and couple of hens to buy. they have more white in them and think they are cross bred.

 

[thaiturkey]

He certainly looks interested in his work! Perhaps you need to get another mature hen to stir things up a bit.

How old are your hens in those pics? I know that scale is difficult to judge from a photo but here is one of ours coming up to 4.5 months.

It's a pity about your eggs. I hope that the next batch works. We had a hatch of 27 from 3 bought hens. One was pecked by a hen as I tried to remove it from the nest, 9 were infertile and we now have 17 chicks up to 10 days old. A first for us so it's time for crossed fingers.

By the way, I've found a source of incubators in Thailand if you're interested.

 

[dude92627]

i'm not sure of the hens...or even the tom's age...language barrier. i do know the hens looked about the same size when i bought them in nov. they were going to be thanksgiving dinner...didn't have the heart though and bought a butterball at makro. it was a shooting match about the eggs, i only had the tom about 3 weeks and they collected about 20, leaving 3 to see if fertile...not good odds. i'll ask about an older hen on my way home, i'm buying a few more tonight. i pay 150 a kilo, not sure if price is good but i do save on gas. i saw a lot of young so one of the toms is up to the task...and a few of the hens. i'll add photos i took on way in.
going to buy the birds with white in them...i just might look into an incubator...thanks

 

[thaiturkey]

'Language barrier' ...........

I know what you mean!

The younger ones look to be about 3 to 4 months as far as I can judge against our own from the pics. I'm interested in the comparison to see how ours are developing in the absence of any reliable benchmark locally.

Could those whites be from battery stock? I haven't heard of any such farms in Thailand so probably not.

THB150 per kilo is right for a mature bird up to about two years. Try offering THB500 per bird. I doubt whether ones older than 2 years are worth buying at that price, though. Poults go for about THB250 each. Ask whether the birds have had injections against infection from mozzie bites. Poults should be injected at 7 days and kept under netting for their first 21 days. If they have raised spots on their faces, don't take them unless you want to be a nurse for a few weeks. If adults are healthy but not injected they should be OK but you should have them done a.s.a.p. and again annually.

I'm still no expert but this is our experience so far! There's some more about all this in my posts on other threads.

If you can't bring yourself to 'process' there is a market for live birds and that is probably the way we shall go. Also, Thailand has a chicken egg shortage at the moment so there may be a niche in your local morning market for turkey eggs.

Here's a link to the incubator supplier. I have a Google home page with Translator and mia can help too, of course. They will deliver by EMS or you can buy from Chatuchak Market in BKK at weekends. Their factory is in Minburi, just north of Suvarnabhumi Airport. Ask your wife to call the factory for a chat - they are very helpful. The incubators are supplied with English language instructions - there should be hours of fun for you with those!

I haven't bought ours yet so I can't offer an opinion.

http://www.incubatorthailand.com//?cid=482444

 

[dude92627]

Language barrier' ...........

I know what you mean!

i explain something to mia...then ask "do you understand?"

she answers "yes"

then i ask "do you know what i mean?"

she answers "no"

welcome to land of smiles!!!

thanks for the info on poults, think i'll buy 4 to raise for thanksgiving. i'm just opening cafe here in udon, want to smoke a few birds for the holidays. the only problem i have dressing out poultry is opening them up and cleaning them out. the stench gets up my nose and lasts for days. might try some vick's and dust mask. i have some pumpkins planted that are doing well in pots, also other farang veggies i brought back with me. let me know if you ever get up to udon and i'll show you around a bit. maybe we can even swap a few birds to limit inbreeding.

 

[thaiturkey]

I have to watch out for the answer when I ask a double negative question:

'You didn't put any diesel in the truck today, did you?'

'Yes'.

That answer in our home means, 'Yes, you are correct, I did not'. 'No' would have meant. 'No, you are incorrect. I did put diesel in the truck'.

Have you considered paying someone else to do the cleaning? I imagine it's one of the worst jobs on earth.

We are planning to be in Udon before the end of the month to pick up some bamboo plants. The place is Nong Wua So on the south west side of Udon Thani. I think you are over to the east side. Mia is talking about staying in a resort close by her sister's home there but I shall try to talk her into staying in town and having dinner at The Irish Clock. Dinner near sister-in-law's home in Nong Wua So could be expensive! It will take a day or two more for me to pin down minor details such as the date and time of arrival (you must know what I mean) but it will probably be a one night trip this time. Could we work something around that? An evening in town for a Leo or two and a chat about turkeys and farming stuff, perhaps?

 

[thaiturkey]

The vet called to give the first medication on Monday and I have to correct what I posted previously. I wrote what I was told but that turns out to be incorrect!

One week after hatching the poults are given drops to the nostrils. This is the first vaccine against 'flu'/chills/viruses. I couldn't get the names of the ailments.

One week later, they will have injections to protect them against infection from mozzie bites. This is to be repeated annually.

Some time later, I don't yet know when but probably a week or two, the second 'flu etc. drops will be given.

Two weeks after the mozzie injections, that's four weeks after hatching, they can be released from the protection of mozzie netting to go walkabout during daylight.

Worm powder can be added to water at some point yet to be determined.

We didn't get the sequence correct with our first five in March because they arrived four weeks after hatching with mozzie bites and one had worms. Emergency action to suit the situation was needed.

The vet's bill om Monday was THB250 (about US$3) for 18 sets of nose drops, including one for mother penned with the poults, and the cat's annual injections, all at home.

Our 17 poults are all strong, lively and noisy. They already flap their wings to speed progress to egg yolk or some other treat that we put under the netting. They seem quite a bit more active than the first 5 were at one month.

I think that the vet will set us up with our own supplies of medication for the next hatch but at his prices I'm quite happy for him to visit and cast an expert eye over them for a general check on health.

I have a great book that describes in detailed text the appearance of chicks of various breeds but the illustrations aren't in colour. We have a mixture of all yellow shades, yellow with grey and light brown and black with yellow on the faces and elsewhere. The three layers are bronze and two other colours and our old man is bronze. The two coloured hens (one light brown and the other grey) came to us egg laden and so the father of some poults may be different again. Given that the breeds probably haven't been kept separate for some generations, I have quite a job on my hands identifying their possible breeds!

 

[dude92627]

my three new birds. it was great hooking up with you last night. thought i'd post the photos on here so you can better see them. hope you had a safe trip home.

 

[thaiturkey]

Good to meet you too, Dude. I hope you got home safely. We just got back laden with bamboo plants. At a police road block to check drivers licenses I was subjected to jokes about the footy result last evening - water off a duck's back for me though.

Now I can see those pics. full size I would say that you have three stags - two at least. That would explain the display as a pecking order thing. You need some more hens!

Speak soon.

 

[dude92627]

3 stags is fine with me, looking forward to thanksgiving and x-mas. i'll stop by and see if any hens are ready to go long time (thai joke). the father-in-law seems to have stepped up and got very interested in the turkeys after i bought the last 3. mixes the feed and feeds them before going to the temple every morning now. that frees me up to concentrate on the cafe. ( here cafe means more like a karaoke bar, which i don't want to be...my first choice was to call it a grill...but they'd pronounce that something like glirr the way we transpose the l's and r's in each others language). i might be interested in buy some of you turkey for butcher around thanksgiving, put the word out to the u.s. expat's about fresh smoked turkey.

thought about you last night at dinner as we were eating bamboo shoots.