Creepy meat! Tastes like chicken!

[ohiofarmgirl]

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[freemotion]

Great story! Totally convinces me to skip meat birds....ever. And to really start looking for another couple of Bourbon Red hens to give my silly and useless turkey hen a run for her money...and her man.

That green muscle disease is DISGUSTING!!!!

 

[ksalvagno]

I have 5 meat birds left out of 8. I'm following the instructions for these guy and still lost 3. The last 5 seem to be in good shape. We have another week or so. I'm not impressed at all. They just grow too abnormally fast. I'd rather grow out other types of chickens and just let them grow longer.

Do you have your turkeys and chickens together? I have been thinking about turkeys but really have no place to keep them. How large of housing do turkeys need?

 

[freemotion]

I'm sure OFG will tell you her set-up, but here is mine....the turkeys chose to ignore the nice space I set up for them and roost on the wall of one of the goat's stalls.

I let them free-range with the chickens and goats. Steve from Sands Poultry told me that the issue with blackhead disease is regional, and I checked with my local ag university and they said there were no reports of the disease in my area. So I have ignored all the warnings in the books and articles about not running turkeys and chickens together, and two years later, the turkeys are still alive.

Except the ones we ate.

 

[TanksHill]

Great post OFG.... Thank you so much for taking on this experiment for all of us. You'll never know until you try my mother always said. Now you know!!!

gina

ps that green muscle thing was nasty!!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

Do you have your turkeys and chickens together?

i'd believe anything that Turkey Steve said! great thought to check with local extension office, Free!

with that blackhead, either you have it or you dont. i'm not sure there is a way to test for it in your soil tho.

for us, we keep the turks in another building and in another fenced-in yard. of course you cant keep the hens out so there is some mixing. and we are ok with the turkey hens being out and about freeranging.

also, the turkeys chase the hens sometimes and there's just plenty of chaos without having them together. and it helps us keep the food separated (altho in the summer we use very little bagged food for the turks) and there arent any scuffles over who nests where.

that being said, Runner has been living in the hen house (with her chicken chicks) since the fall... and Turkey Bob has been living there since this winter. Turkey Bob has mauled by his fellow jakes and needed somewhere to recuperate. now he just kinda wanders around wherever he wants. and lucky for him, we really like him so we banded him a different color so he wont end up on the table. he's really very likable and has turned into a handsome tom. and he's not mean like that darn Ostrich who is now in the freezer. harumph.

anyway

the hard lesson we learned was to keep the ducks and turks separate. we lost half of a clutch last year. Turkey Steve said it was cocci caused from how wet the ducks were (the dampness make the cocci bloom in the soil). we were able to stop it with sulmet but it was a very hard loss. this is the main reason we built the duck garage - now the turkeys have the yard/building to themselves.

really turkeys are so easy (and fun!) and they really pay off. we like them better then the chickens. you couldnt depend on them for eggs, but wow - easy peasy and very hardy. no special heat or any kind of pampering even in the coldest winter. just get them out of the wind and there you have it. in the summer they seem to take the heat ok.

the only problem we've had is that we needed to run them in if i was really rainy especially when they are young. they'll just stand out there, which is fine, but the younger ones are still kinda delicate. once you get them past the danger zone, they are pretty much goof-proof.

 

[Javamama]

That's enough info for me! No frankenchickens. I can't even go to your blog to look at them
Boy I would love to do turkeys. If I could get DH to hotwire the back back yard (Yes, I said back x2 ) I'd have all kinds of stuff. It's not real safe though because the back back garage blocks the entire view. I'd have to have security cameras