10/23/2025
This beautiful lady 😍
How a meat turkey of her size is able to jump up that high and roost is beyond me.
This was our first year with meat turkeys and it has been amazing and disappointing all at the same time. At the moment we have 3 left out of the 10 we started with.
Our soil has always been hard on the birds here. It's riddled with every kind of parasite which is what prompted us to put sand in all of the chicken pens years ago.
The turkeys pick up blackhead from chickens. Our heritage birds we treat with antibiotics and unfortunately with meat turkeys you cannot treat with the antibiotics we use. So we have had to practice survival of the fittest. Many ppl suggested we deworm the chickens to prevent blackhead but it is so much more than that. We only treat our birds when necessary to prevent resistance to medications/treatments. They can pick up blackhead from many things in their environment. Not just chickens.
Next year we will try to put the meat turkeys further away in the field away from all the other birds. We will put a boot wash tub to disinfectant our boots prior to entering their area. If that doesn't work... then we go back to our regular set up.
