Turkeys

We recently bought a few turkeys with the intension of (hopefully) breeding and rearing some. We have had turkeys before. We bought 3’slate’ coloured birds in the latter half of 2012, ready for Christmas dinner. We never had any intension of breeding these birds, as they were from the same bloodline. And we had never kept them before.

Now we had read that you shouldn’t keep turkeys with chickens or ducks. This is mainly as both birds can carry a disease that doesn’t affect them, but maybe fatal to turkeys- “Blackhead”. Our first few however were sourced from free ranged flock that were breed and reared amongst chickens. It does sound a little harsh. However the decision was to try it, as it would only affect the turkeys and not our existing birds. If the turkeys did develop the disease it would mean we would not be able to keep turkey’s onsite for about 2 years- as the disease can survive in the soil.

But as they fared well, I guess our other birds were not carriers of the disease. So more recently we decided as we breed and rear other birds, turkeys were no extra trouble. Our previous birds, as with these, prefer to roost up high- on the poultry shed or shade sail frame. But in general they are no trouble.

Do note however when we had ducklings, the last lot of turkeys did try and eat them occasionally- though they bore the wrath of the mother duck!  The house that we bought our male- 1 year old bronze turkey (larger breed than the slate we had before) had the opposite situation. Their ducks were attacking the turkey young. The 2 females were sourced from another local self- breeder/rearer. Both are  6 months old, so hopefully just old enough to lay; one also being ‘bronze’ and the other is more of a ‘bourbon’.