Why Do You Have Turkeys? What Kind Do You Have?

[BigRednRock]

i have turkeys because my husband bought a bronze for thanksgiving....his name is Dinner.. then we rescued a royal palm hen and her 7 eggs. only 1 lived.

 

[pongoid]

I am interested in these Beltsville whites.
I used to live in Madison Wisconsin.
Maybe I can make a trip back to get a few poults.

I don't have an incubator.

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[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

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Actually the Beltsville Small White was developed in the mid to late 1930's by Stanley Marsden and others at the USDA research station in Beltsville Md. hence the name. At it's hayday it was the #1 selling turkey in the USA in the early 1950's. The BSW is the idea behind the the Broad Breasted White - uniform body shape, close in weight makes it easy for the grower and processor. In the 50's the BB type turkeys came onto the scene and almost doomed the heritage turkey period. Half the grow out time, twice the weight you can see why the growers switched.

A quick history of the BSW, from the Beltsville USDA station the flock was sent to the Ames, Iowa USDA station for study in parthenogenesis which the BSW's are known for. Two people were able to get stock from Ames, one line stayed in the mid west the other was sent to the west cost, also some were sent to Canada for study at the university of Guelph (sp) by the USDA. Since then the west coast line has remained unchanged, the mid west line now has (legaly) Canadain blood mixed in. Rumor and the grapevine has it that pure Canadian BSW's are availible in the US but they have been imported under the table. I have talked to the people that got eggs from Ames and have been able to trace them person to person to where they are today (west coast and midwest) I have never seen a pure Canadian. That would be a pure Canadian BSW not to offend our friends up north.

The Midget White was developed in the 50's and I always figured they were trying to cash in on the BSW sales. The Beltsville is in the APA standard and was admitted in 1951 the Midget is not in the standard. The BSW's are very hardy and healthy birds. Ours outlay the other turkeys combined. The poults are stocky and blocky alot like the Broad Breasted.

I can't find a good pic of the adults this is all I have handy

I spent about a year or so tracking down leads and getting the history of a fine variety of turkey, I always wished I could have found more of the breeding records from Beltsville but they were all hand written and probably lost forever.

Steve

 

[Patchesnposies]

My husband was feeling romantic this morning and brought me home 10 Bronze turkey poults from our local feed store!

They are the friendliest little things! I don't know much about the breed so I will have to do my research. I thought he mentioned the word broad breasted, is that a type of bronze turkey? He didn't say the word standard, is there a difference or are they one and the same?

Our history with turkey's has not been stellar. A year and a half or so ago we were given a Black Spanish Tom and a Midget White hen. The Tom was aggressive and we re-homed him, the little hen was eaten while sitting a nest. We weren't exactly ready to take adequate care of either of them at that time.

So we built a pen and decided to try again, this time buying some Rio Grande poults. You'll have to pardon me, I know I am taking a big risk here amongst all of the turkey lovers, but these poults were the dumbest birds I have ever had the privilege to witness. Seriously. They all ended up drowned, smothered or hung by the neck due to flying into the side of their chain link pen. To this day, I am not sure how it managed to fly straight into the side and get hung by the neck the way it did. Weird.

At any rate, I did love the little midget girl we had for a short while. She had a very endearing personality and I really enjoyed all of her little noises she made. I think turkey's are a very beautiful bird, especially those tom's with their gnarly faces and snoods.

So it really touched me when my DH brought me home these ten little babies! I hope they stay as sweet tempered as they seem to be. When I pick one up it will just settle in and close its eyes and make sweet little noises, its hard not to fall in love with them.

Are some turkey breeds, ahem, less intelligent than others? More aggressive/less aggressive? I guess it is like chickens, some are more dominant, etc...

 

[babymakes6]

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I hate to be the one to share, but you do know that Broad-breasted turkeys are the meat birds?

 

[Patchesnposies]

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Meaning? That they won't be able to reproduce naturally due to weight? Not sure what you are hating to tell me?

Having 10, if they all survive, I figure a number of them will be for holiday dinners (ours and we will probably sell some or send to freezer camp), undoubtedly there will be one or two (maybe several?) that will end up pets.......with six kids there is always someone who "loves" some feathered friend so much we can't eat/sell or give it away. lol

I still get to tease my DH that his idea of a special gift anymore is poultry! (What ever happened to jewelry???)

I can be a bit of a dim bulb at times....so please share with me what it is that I am not getting. Will their being meat birds mean they will be a bit like cornish rock's, slow and not too bright?

 

[babymakes6]

I think they can tend to be that way. I was just saying don't get too attached because then you will have a hard time killing them when it is time

 

[Denninmi]

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Meaning? That they won't be able to reproduce naturally due to weight? Not sure what you are hating to tell me?

....so please share with me what it is that I am not getting. Will their being meat birds mean they will be a bit like cornish rock's, slow and not too bright?

I've never had these (or any turkeys until this spring), but my understanding is that, due to the way they've been bred for extreme muscle mass, they birds have a tremendous number of health issues because their bodies can't support the weight -- much like the health issues faced by extremely morbidly obese humans or like retired NFL players who had tremendous muscle mass in their prime but have serious health issues from the combination of weight and the stresses their bodies endured. These include things like inability to walk, bone and joint issues, and maybe perhaps other systemic problems like diabetes or gall bladder issues (just guessing on those, but it could happen I guess).

Anyway, my understanding is they generally don't live too long, like a year or so, which is why they aren't recommended for pets.

Now, just purely conjecture on my part, but it seems to me that, if you did want to try to keep these as pets, the best thing you could do for them is to keep them as lean as possible, limit their food intake to the minimum to keep them healthy and make sure its really high quality feed with the right balance of nutrition, vitamins, and so forth, make them exercise and work for their food rather than just plunking a bowl of it down, that type of thing.

Now, if anyone reading this has experience with these, please let me know your opinion of my theories -- just curious to see if I'm on the right track here.

 

[trimpy]

We have 4 blue slate turkeys that are about a month old. We wanted to get turkeys for a while, but the order minimums were all way over what we wanted to keep until we found someone local selling eggs for $1/ea. The plan is to raise a small flock to have birds available for eating around the holiday seasons.

 

[mstricer]

I have 2 white broad chested. I went to Meyers hatchery for poultry freezer bags and came home with. Thanksgiving and Christmas. LOL