How to Raise Turkeys at Home

Turkeys aren't just for Thanksgiving and Christmas. You can enjoy turkey all year, and what better way to enjoy turkeys than by raising your own backyard flock of turkeys. These large poultry birds can be reared in any backyard and can make an excellent companion to raising chickens, raising ducks, raising guineas or any other type of bird. Like all types of backyard farm birds, you need to provide your pet turkeys with the exact care requirements that they need to thrive and grow.

Tips for raising turkeys from start to finish:

• Introduce your baby turkeys (young turkeys are often known as poults) to their food and water once you've placed them in their brooder. For the best results, add a couple tablespoons of table sugar to a quart of water for their first three days of brooder life. Guide them toward their food, and dip their beaks in the sugar water so they know where to find it.
• Heating: When raising turkey poults, their brooder should be kept at 95 degrees Fahrenheit. For the best results, use a single heat lamp for every batch of 50 turkeys and reduce the heat by five degrees every seven days.
• Litter: Your turkeys will enjoy a three to four inch deep litter surface. Try thick wood shavings or straw.
• Feeding turkeys: Turkeys thrive best when fed a protein-rich diet. When feeding your pet turkeys, give them a turkey food with a listed protein percentage of 28 percent. Unlike other animals, like feeding chickens, you should provide the turkey food at all times so they can eat whenever they are hungry.
  

Your turkeys will love living free-ranged on pasture grass. This gives these gamebirds room to roam and enjoy fresh grass, nutritious bugs, breezy air and warm sunshine. It also lowers the cost of raising turkeys because you'll need to feed them less. For the best results when moving your turkeys into a pasture environment, start transitioning them outdoors once they're six weeks old and have lost all their down. Move them in the morning, and place them in an area of pasture that has shelter, food and water. Once they know where these important turkey housing elements are, they can venture out and start roaming. The best turkey pasture should have both legumes and grasses for optimal nutrition balancing and feed, similar to pasture used for other poultry and gamebirds. To keep your outdoor turkeys safe, erect either a wire fence that's six feet tall, or use electric netting. One of the most important elements of an outdoor turkey house is the shelter and roost. Every turkey should have a foot-long roost that's approximately a foot off the ground.