Raising Turkeys

We love raising turkeys. Love, love, love, love, love.

Except sometimes they give us a really hard time.

Carmen, our Meatbird Manager, and I were commiserating and laughing last week - talking about what a rollercoaster raising turkeys is.

The hard part has always been the baby turkeys in the brooder.

We set the day-old poults (yes, that is what a baby turkey is called - and not "pullet," which is an adolescent laying hen) up in our brooder barn. They are too delicate to go straight to pasture. They are hardy enough to go out to pasture when they are about five weeks old.

Our brooder is set up to keep them clean, warm, and safe from predators with lots of access to feed and water (what a good mama turkey would give her babes).

Turkeys are different from chickens, and we have had harder times starting them in the brooder. We're still working on figuring out solutions to problems that pop up!

One thing we love about turkeys is also the thing that seems to make them really hard in the brooder: they love us. Yes, they love us, and they want us to be with them. When we aren't with them they seem to get anxious and freak out and do things like pile up on each other. (Yes, bad things happen when they pile up on each other.)

So, we end up spending a lot of time with them in the brooder early on, checking on them often. They swarm our feet and just love us, which is really cute, but the time commitment is a bit exhausting.

Turkeys are just really social, kind of like puppies. Chickens, by contrast, seem to not need us that much.

This is true for turkeys as they get older too, but *without* the piling up on each other and hurting each other. Their love is all positive: when we approach they run up to the fence, the males strut, they hang around. they even talk to us when we make noises (they can do call and response with a trilling noice).

Turkeys are also so in love with the fresh pasture that we give them that it makes moving them to fresh pasture all the more satisfying. Their heads are down, chomping away, gobbling grass like it's the best dinner ever.

Carmen was joking that she feels like what they say about mothers who forget all about the pains of childbirth when they see their adorable babies. Her memory of our miseries of brooding turkeys is fading as she adores the mature turkeys in the pasture, and she talks it down: "It wasn't that bad, right?" Ha!

No, it was that bad, but turkeys in the pasture are just that good.

Right now, the turkeys are right in the field in front of the farm store. They are a beautiful sight to see: vigorous, grazing, frolicking birds on green grass living a wonderful life. You should take some time to come to the farm when we are open and pay them a visit! Just sit down in the field next to them, bring a meal or drink and enjoy watching them be happy and funny. If you are unsure of how to get to them, just ask the person working the farm store for details.

Processing started on September 2nd, so by the end of the month they'll be in our freezers...

...so mark your calendars: at 8am on October 1st, our Thanksgiving turkeys go on sale! Don't miss out on these beauties!

-Jesse Straight