TheSeedObsesser
Deeply Rooted
...Turkeys, White Broad-Breasted (Industrial type) turkeys! I thought I'd start a thread to document my 4H project for this year. We've just picked them up today so this would be Day 1. I've got six of them and I'm raising them with chickens because I've read that they are slow learners - they sure are! (If your are wondering, the chickens are Partridge Rocks.) I have to give the turkeys credit though, as they are functioning better than I expected. They could not eat plain food so I made mash out of it. I also had a few poults that would stick their entire heads in the water to get a drink, for that I put gravel along the bottom of the water dish to prevent them from sticking their whole heads in. I put some apple cider vinegar in their water, might put some colloidal silver in down the line, there's no way that I'm using antibiotics. I was a little nervous about doing turkeys at first as the neighbor's did them last year and only had two survive out of nearly twenty, no casualties yet and they are doing great. Here are pictures:
they drop like flies and find the dumbest ways to die, and we raise heritage breeds, I can't imagine how hard it would be to keep meet turkeys alive. 
But they make the most adorable noises, and there is nothing cuter than having a dozen baby turkey poults chase you around the yard like a mass of puppys. 
Actually that is one of their problems, they have no sense and will follow anything that moves, including the very large clumsy dogs, angry hens who will kill them, and sheep who don't care if something is screaming under their hoof, and of course they are so stealthy the will slip under a feed bag or 3 gallon waterer, in a heartbeat as you set it down.
