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02-13-2020, 12:22 PM

#9

Turkeyturnkey

Spike

Join Date: Feb 2020

Posts: 1

I've got six turkey chicks at the moment and another 7 eggs under a hen. Getting the poults to start eating was tricky -- I'd read it was tricky but I didn't believe it. I tried crumbles in a chick feeder. I tried crumbles in a bowl. I tried crumbles on a piece of foil (they tried to eat the edges of the foil :sigh

. I tried putting marbles in the food bowl. I tried picking up food and making momma hen bop-bop-bop-bop-bop noises. All without luck. I ended up making up some of my emergency crop tubing (baby) bird food up, offered it to them on a spoon and they went nuts for that. After that I wet the crumbles and they're happy with those too. But even at a week old they will not touch dry crumbles.

They're very like chickens, but more stupid (if you can believe it...). Much slower in their movements. We did start with 7 poults, but lost one yesterday to what appears to have been getting stuck in a part of the cage that should have been impossible to be stuck in. These things are seriously stupid, and terminally stupid in some cases it seems.

Other than those two things, not too different to raising chickens in a brooder, though you'll probably want a different food for them. Apparently they need high protein food. I'm using meatbird crumbles (20%) with added nutritional yeast to get the protein up as I haven't been able to find a gamebird starter food (or any gamebird food for that matter). And as it's an unmedicated feed I'm on permanent poop watching duty just in case I need to treat for coccidiosis.

In terms of raising one for a Christmas meal, I presume you're not going to want a 14 month old bird on the plate, which is what you'll get with a spring hatched poult. So far as I know turkeys have a limited laying season, which may make it difficult to get hold of fertile eggs/poults at the right time to be able to butcher at 6-8 months without needing to freeze the bird before eating.

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