Turkey Poults

These are our newest addition, turkey poults. It is always a struggle to get a local turkey in the fall. They are in short supply and expensive. Last year they were between three and four dollars a pound. That makes a good sized bird as much as $80, which is getting too expensive for us. We like turkey and like to cook several between October and March, for holiday meals and family gatherings. Turkey's are a great way to put on a big pleasant meal. Turkey's at the supermarket are often cheap around Thanksgiving, but now that they are explicitly marked as a product of US / Canada / Mexico, I can no longer buy them in good conscience. It was bad enough knowing they were feed lot / poultry barn birds. Now that they might be foreign made industrial ag animals, it's just too much.

So, this year, we are trying raising our own birds. It's not a big difference in cost over buying a local organic bird since we are feeding grain. The ten poults were about $50, 50 lbs of grain is about $10, even our inexpensive stock panel housing costs money and the opportunity cost of choosing to spend our time raising turkeys instead of something else. We are starting with ten with the hope of getting at least six birds out of the season. Since we don't know a lot about turkey's I wouldn't be surprised if we have some losses.

These are broad breasted birds, bred for more breast meat. Bronze and Polish White's. Heritage breeds were not as readily available and after plucking Guineas, I was willing to accept the broad breasted birds. Maybe we'll try heritage breeds in the future for their ability to reproduce. But we'll start with these and see how it goes.