What should I feed my turkeys to get them fat and juicy??

[pdpatch]

This last Sunday we butchered bbb hen and tom, we got them in May, so we had the around 22 or 23 weeks or so. I didn't use a scale But you can sort of estimate the live weight by what you got from the turkey. for the last two month we had them on a mix of 20% starter/grower and layer feed. Both my son and myself had to carry the tom from his pen up to the area we were butchering at. These were the biggest male and hen this year. We didn't keep whole birds, but!!!

Note if you just get the breast , thigh, and leg this is about 1/3 or a little more the total body weight for heritage turkeys. A little more for BB types near 1/2 the body weight.
so the calculated weight for the Tom as some where around 36 pounds and the hen just at 30 pounds. The biggest Heritage type I have ever butchered and measure the weight was about 27 pounds.

Rooster:
breast: 1 pound

Red Bourbon 1 1/2 years old:
breast: 1.7 pounds
leg and thigh: 3 pounds

BBB Male:
breast 5.5 pound
leg: 2 pounds
thigh: 2 pounds

BBB Hen:
breast: 3.5 pounds

We this year we fed the 50/50 mix, free ranged, and fancy scratch for the last month or so, which slowed their growth. Fancy scratch usually is about 50% cracked corn and the rest assorted seeds. Or you can get a wild bird seed mix to help add those trace mineral and vitamins that you won't get with a straight commercial mix.

Tom

 

[SaraF]

My guess is if you are feeding 20% protein feed, they are going to get fairly large, since that is what I feed my fair BBWs. I have had birds weigh in at 58lbs when they approached almost 25 weeks. We havn't been able to butcher the birds as whole birds for years, becuase by the time they get to auction,fair or butcher, they are to big for the oven

They always have to be cut in halfs.
If i were you, i would weigh them. What i usually do if weigh myself on the scale, and them pick my bird up (usually in a flip position where im holding onto the shanks of the legs. no this doesn't hurt them, so dont worry about them) then weigh me and the bird and subtract the difference.
if they are approaching your weigh limit to fast, i would switch them to a lower protein food. I've used scratch grain before, and its high in fat if you wanna make them a bit juicier when they get to the oven. Also, dont fret, they loose a lot of weigh once they are butchered, so mine have came out at 25, sometimes 30 pound birds instead, or 17lbs halfs.

 

[49erjohns]

LOTS OF CORN. My biggest bronze was 80 pounds - chicks from RIDGEWAY HATCHERY.

 

[ShadyHoller]

Another thing to consider is sunflower seed. High in fat and protein. We grow our own (actually they volunteer in the spring - we just let them grow on their own.) Also, big bags of black oil sunflower seed at the feed store aren't that expensive.

Once our plants mature, we cut down whole plants from time to time, throw them in the coop, and let the birds pick 'em apart. At the same time, we pull out the stalks from the previous batch of sunflowers that we had thrown in.

The chickens are especially fastidious about teasing out every last seed. The turkeys aren't quite so thorough. They get distracted whenever their brains flicker off and on and they forget what they were doing. Such knuckleheads.

 

[gljrusinko]

How long can you keep a turkey refrigerated vs. frozen after butchering before cooking? I was told by the processor 7 days…that seems like a long time. This is our first time.

 

[gljrusinko]

If the turkey weighs in at 35 pounds, how much does it usually come out after butchering?

 

[phoenixrises]

This is my first time raising Turkeys. I decided to do similar to what the French do with their Brisee chickens and have no clue if it will matter or not. They have free ranged over 5 acres until yesterday. yesterday I moved them to an 8x8 shed with a small 4x4 outdoor "porch" they can go out onto. I have upped their fat considerably through both black sunflower seeds (20% fat) whole goats milk and a higher fat lower protein feed.

So basically I spent the past 20 weeks letting them build muscle then I will spend the next 2.5 weeks adding fat layers. In theory that should work. We'll see.

I still have no clue how i'm going to process these gigantic things.

 

[chknoodles]

We skin our turkey and wrap bacon on it when cooking..no scalding or plucking...

 

[chicken pickin]

We skin our turkey and wrap bacon on it when cooking..no scalding or plucking...

YUM!!! Im gonna try that this year.

 

[chicken pickin]

I don't feed my Turkeys anything special to fatten them up they pretty much do that themselves. I start them on a 28% turkey or multi flock starter. Then switch them to a 22% multi flock starter/grower and that is what they stay on. Last year I did finish them off with a grower/finisher feed. Im not sure Im going to do that this year. I also let them free range daily starting at bout 10weeks old all the way up until process day, now that fall is here they don't have much to forage for but they try. Im going to give them some left over pumpkins today.