Which is the most self sufficient and yummy turkey breed?

[pinkfox]

and then there are the days i spend drooling over some of the verieties at porterturkeys.com

im hoping to have a nice little trio of turkeys on my farm as "farm pets" that produce eggs and offspring to make meat...so in my case i also want a turkey thats "pretty" and personable as well as naturally breeding, and eventually yummy lol

 

[patandchickens]

Hmmm....the ones they have at my feed store are a different white turkey, they say they are from Holland and their plummage is white.

White Hollands are an older meat breed, from before the commercial broad-breasted strains took over. They do breed naturally and are not grotesque

Basically anything pure white has generally been selected for meat conformation and would be a good choice if you want a meaty carcass. Plain bronze turkeys have also generally got meat-selected characteristics in their heritage (unless you are TRULY getting WILD turkeys that have not experienced selection for anything other than health and breeding ability) because really if you are breeding turkeys you're either gonna select for color or for meatiness and there ain't all that mcuh color-selecting you can do with bronzes ;P

Whereas anything fancy-colored has almost always been selected for color NOT for meat conformation, some lines of Bourbon Reds being allegedly an exception (I have no experience with this other than the only BRs that I have personally seen the carcasses from have *not* been especially meat-conformed). Royal Palms are seriously not bred for meat conformation, you will get a much lower %meat from the carcass weight than you would on other turkeys, although of course what you do get will still be tasty.

So if you want a good amount of eatin' off your turkeys, rather than a scrawny specimen that is much more bone and fat than meat, I would suggest considering anything-pure-white or most pure bronzes either.

(I say "most" because while wild turkeys are not necessarily the meatiest, I would tend to wonder how purely wild-turkey the "wild" turkeys your feedstore is selling really are. It seems to be pretty common around here, anyhow, to sell standard bronze turkeys as wild, even though they're not. I am NOT talking about the modern commercial broad-breasted bronzes, I am talking about heritage-type bronzes which have Depression-era meat bird genetics but will still breed naturally adn go broody and all that)

If you want bourbon reds or anything other fancy colored I'd suggest trying to find someone who's got adult birds (on the hoof or in the freezer) FROM THE SAME SOURCE and see whether their birds would suit your needs conformation-wise.

(I wasted a buncha feed and space on some Narragansetts last spring, from a source who swore to me that yeah they were plenty meaty. Yahhhhh.... nope. Mostly bone and fat. Still tasty, but they ate just as much as my heritage bronzes and beltsville small whites, for a lot less meat offa the bird. Sigh)

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[savingdogs]

Thank you Pat for explaining those white turkeys to me.

Now that I see that I will need fencing and a house for them individually, I realize I may not be able to afford starting up with them until next year. I'll start checking Craigs list for cheap fencing materials again. I thought they would be able to share either the chicken or the duck coop and I see now they would probably not work out well there.

I will have to let the goats clear out a "field" for me for them too, so I guess this is just a longer term project than I thought.

Oh well, I researched chickens for almost a year before getting them, I can always do the same with turkeys.

 

[meriruka]

I love my Bourbon Reds! Sturdy, healthy, very friendly and they stay on the ground. I have two toms who like their bellies rubbed when they are on the roost. I have to keep them penned because of predators here and while they stick together, they travel really far - really fast when freeranging.

As chicks they need a little extra supervision as they need to be kept warm & dry at all times but they will fry themselves under the heat lamp if you're not careful. They will drown themselves in the water dish if you don't add pebbles and I had one escape the brooder and drown itself in the toilet two rooms away so make sure your brooder top is secure......

 

[patandchickens]

I thought they would be able to share either the chicken or the duck coop and I see now they would probably not work out well there.

I dunno, there are certainly enough BYCers with turkeys and chickens living together peacefully (in ample space), I have not had mine together beyond a few months of age but I really doubt there'd be trouble. What if you got just a few turkeys, like 3, and tried it? If it is clear it isn't going to work, then <insert turkey dinner here>, but if it DOES work then you can hatch your OWN turkeys for next year instead of buying them at unreasonable prices.

(Blackhead would only be a concern if either a) you know that blackhead IS a serious problem in your particular geographic area, and/or b) if you are just feeling real paranoid about it)

Just a thought anyhow,

Pat

 

[savingdogs]

I thought they would be able to share either the chicken or the duck coop and I see now they would probably not work out well there.

I dunno, there are certainly enough BYCers with turkeys and chickens living together peacefully (in ample space), I have not had mine together beyond a few months of age but I really doubt there'd be trouble. What if you got just a few turkeys, like 3, and tried it? If it is clear it isn't going to work, then <insert turkey dinner here>, but if it DOES work then you can hatch your OWN turkeys for next year instead of buying them at unreasonable prices.

(Blackhead would only be a concern if either a) you know that blackhead IS a serious problem in your particular geographic area, and/or b) if you are just feeling real paranoid about it)

Just a thought anyhow,

Pat

I just googled and found an interesting turkey site for my area. We do have a problem with blackhead as well as with molds. They suggested not keeping them too closely confined. I think I most definetly need a small field cleared for them. Sigh.

 

[patandchickens]

How clear do turkeys *need* a field? Just clear the brush along the line where you want to put the fencing, and there ya go.

(Sorry, can you tell I think everyone should have turkeys? LOL)

FWIW I've had excellent luck with poult survival (no losses to date) by starting exactly-same-age chicken chicks along with them, so the chicks teach the poults about food and water and other necessities.

Pat

 

[steve_of_sandspoultry]

Turkey Steve (Steve of Sands Poultry) did a couple articles about the difference in the breeds...lemme see if I can get him to pitch in here. I wanna say his article was published in Backyard Poultry.

If I can be of any help ask away. We raise 6 varieties of turkeys. Midget White, Beltsville White, White Holland, Bourbon Red, Royal Palm and standard Bronze. As OFG said we have written some articles for the ALBC, Mother Earth News, Backyard Poultry and Countryside magazine.

Here is one about raising them.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/The-Happy-Homesteader/Raising-Turkey-Poults.aspx

Steve

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

yay Steve! thanks!

 

[lwheelr]

Holland Whites are a medium sized bird. Beltsville and Midget Whites are small turkeys.

Wild turkey is a designation that is only supposed to be used for true wild turkeys - and I won't raise them, because many states have regulations about requiring a gamebird license to do so, since they are a wild breed (and can therefore affect wild turkey populations, plus it is illegal in most states to just capture true wild ones to breed and raise them without a license).

I refuse to raise any broad breasted variety. I can't see increasing the demand for a bird that can't even breed and perpetuate itself. The process of breeding them by AI is obscene - I don't EVER want to shake hands with anyone who works in a turkey breeding facility!

So for us, it is heritage or nothing.

Turkey story...

One of our neighbors raised 10 broad breasted bronze turkeys last fall. They asked us if we would know what to do with one if they gave us one. We said yes, we knew how to butcher them - our general policy is to not turn down free meat. That was the last we heard from them until the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

We arrived home from church to find a message on our answering machine. They told us there was a turkey in the front seat of our truck. Mind you, it was 30 degrees outside and a snowstorm was just settling in, but it was about 70 degrees inside that truck because it had been sunny all afternoon.

We went out to find a black garbage bag, with the whole turkey in it - killed, but not dressed out in any way - head still on it. The thing was still warm, and starting to stink. It had to be 50 lbs - the biggest turkey I've ever seen in my life.

They had shot it with bird shot (I think they were probably afraid of it and didn't know how else to kill it). So it was perforated through all the best meat. We were not able to dress it out, we were only able to skin it partway, salvage the breast meat and the legs (which still smelled fresh), and toss the rest. This was all accomplished outside, as snow was really starting to fall thick and fast.

The drumsticks on it were 6" in diameter. One piece of breast meat filled a 9X13 cake pan.

Made me sick though, what they did to it. We just wished they'd called us and said to come and get it instead of ruining it first. Or if not that, at least warned us it was coming so we could have been prepared instead of having to drop everything and run out to butcher a massacred turkey in a snowstorm!