Getting Turkeys Off to a Good Start

This is the second in a series of articles on how farmers can include pasture raised turkeys in their operation.

Newly hatched poults in the brooder. They are all gathered around Harry, watching mesmerized as he wiggles his fingers over their heads.
Dave Perozzi / Wrong Direction Farm

In this installment in our series on turkeys, I’ll cover the brooding phase. Brooding refers to the early period when turkey poults (yes, they are called poults, not chicks) need extra care and attention. As they grow and mature, turkeys can become quite resilient, but during their juvenile phase they need some mothering. Unless you have hens hatching clutches of eggs, you, the farmer, need to be the surrogate hen.

More so than any other class of domesticated birds, poults need an attentive farmer. This means multiple checkups per day, especially during the first days after hatching. I recommend using your five gallon bucket for more than carrying feed. Set it down and have a seat on it. Turkeys appreciate attention from humans, and will gladly gather around to peck at your shoelaces and to stare up at you in beady-eyed wonder.

Spend some time observing the birds, noticing the patterns in their behavior. Where are they spending their time? Where are they drinking? Are there any wet spots in the bedding? Are they comfortable sleeping? Are they piling up for heat? Are they trying to move far from heaters? How does the environment smell?

Setting Up a Brooder

A turkey brooder can take many forms, so I won’t be prescriptive about how to configure yours. If you are already using a brooder for chickens, it will probably also be serviceable for turkeys, at least during the early stages.

If you are planning on brooding turkeys in an area that has been used by other poultry, start with a good cleaning. This is a good standard practice for disease prevention, but turkeys are especially susceptible picking up illnesses early on, so take the time to do a thorough cleaning. If possible, I’d recommend a full power wash of all surfaces, feeders, and waterers. If you have a dirt floor, scrape down to bare dirt. Then apply a generous dusting of barn lime or gypsum powder to the floors and allow that to sit undisturbed for a few days. This will dry out the floor and create a good, pathogen-free foundation.

A brooder will require bedding. The best options in the Northeast are peat moss and kiln dried wood planer shavings. I recommend avoiding wet shavings, wood chips, or hay as all of these are prone to clumping and growing mold. If you have access to hulls (oats, rice, etc) or well-chopped straw, these may also work. On our farm, we now use peat moss exclusively. It is more expensive than wood shavings, but we find that we use less than half as many bales, so the final costs are comparable. It is dusty and dirty, so be prepared for that, but our experience indicates that it prevents many of the early-onset diseases like coccidiosis that can be traced back to manure-soaked bedding.

When planning a turkey brooder, bear in mind that they’ll need to be in there for five or six weeks. We normally bring chicks out of the brooder at 2.5 to 3 weeks of age, but turkeys need the extra time. If you are bringing turkey poults out to pasture, if they can be fully protected from rain, and if the weather is staying above 60 degrees at night, you might be able to bring them out of the brooder at four weeks, but this will be risky. Be sure to allow for plenty of space and to plan for frequent applications of additional bedding materials during the final weeks in the brooder.

The Big Concerns

When we think about the needs for poults in a brooder, here the important points:

• Air Quality – Make sure your brooder is designed so the poults are not experiencing any cold drafts, but never seal things up completely. All our brooders are set up with two sets of fans. A smaller 12” fan is set on a percentage timer so I can ensure that some of the air in the brooder is exchanged every five minutes. A larger 20” fan is set on a thermostat so I can cool the brooder on hot days. Ammonia begins to damage lungs at levels that are still undetectable to the human nose. But if you smell ammonia, you have a ventilation problem, and this will certainly have a long tail of health effects for your turkeys during the remainder of their grow-out. For an example of how we set up our ventilation, see https://wrongdirectionfarm.com/2019/03/16/command-and-control/
• Heat – Poults need more heat than chickens. We aim for a 95 degree ambient temperature on day one. We want to have both hot zones and warm zones, allowing the poults to soak up some heat when needed, but also some place to go when they are fully warmed. We drop the thermostat by one degree per day until the temperature is at 70 degrees. After that, we set the minimum temperature to 60 degrees for the remainder of the brooding period. 
• Water – Be sure the poults are drinking water soon after arrival. We typically catch poults and dip their beaks in water. After introducing ten or twenty poults to water, the others seem to catch on and copy that behavior. If the birds have been stressed by a long transit from the hatchery, hydration is your first priority. 
• Feed – Source a high-quality turkey starter feed. During the first two days, we cover the brooders with trays full of feed. For the newly hatched poults it is critically important that they get a cropful of food, so we want them to be finding food wherever they turn. If you can source fresh-milled feed, you’ll notice a significant benefit compared to bagged feeds. After grain is milled, oxidation and other processes begin to degrade starches, fats, and vitamins. 
• Dry, clean feet – Keep the bedding managed so your turkeys are standing on dry ground. Dig out and replace bedding that has become soaked due to leaks. Rake or fork bedding to prevent the formation of a manure cap. As needed, top off with fresh material. 
• Pests – Be vigilant to close up any holes by which predators can gain access to your birds. Rats, skunks, racoons, foxes, weasels and, of course, cats and dogs are all common four legged threats. Owls can also be crafty adversaries if you have any openings accessible from above. 

The Madding Crowd

Turkeys are gregarious, and while that makes for some entertaining antics, it also puts them at additional risk when young. They are prone to crowding. This can turn deadly, particularly during the early days. Pileups are typically due to temperature problems. A cold draft or an overheated brooder can each send all the turkeys into a corner where they stack up and smother each other. During the first two days we make frequent visits to the brooder, and we break up any turkey gatherings that look risky. Typically just passing an open palm, brushing along the tops of their heads will encourage them to get up and to move about.

Turkeys also are better fliers than other young poultry, so as you survey your brooder, look for hazards a flying poult might get itself into. Be especially careful about leaving buckets and open-topped containers in turkey coops. Pay close attention to bulk feeders without lids. Turkeys can fly into a bucket and pile up on top of each other, smothering the ones below.

Enjoying Turkeys

I wonder sometimes how best to communicate the pleasure of raising turkeys. Inevitably I feel the need to enumerate the cautions for all the things that might go wrong in the brooder, but just listing cautions doesn’t do the experience justice. So I’ll circle back to the idea I started with: the attentive farmer. As we spend time with our birds and give them the attention they need, we’ll be able to sort through all the problems that might arise. But in the meantime, we’ll find that raising turkeys is enjoyable. They are great birds to have on the farm.

Next time I’ll begin talking about what to do when the turkeys are ready to get onto the pasture.