Feedback on Turkeys

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Here are some current (June 1973) prices for various ingredients recommended by Widmer...and remember that these quotations are for truckload lots.

Powdered milk is now available, in this area at least, only at the grocery store for an estimated $1.00 per pound.

I've added the price of soybean meal—which Widmer doesn't mention—because it's necessary as a protein supplement. None of the rations recommended in Practical Animal Husbandry contain enough protein for turkeys ... especially young ones, which require at least 29%. I'm of the opinion that grain may have contained more of that essential ingredient in the 40's than it does now. The feed grains raised in this country at present are different varieties from the ones grown then, and are generally chosen not for nutritional value but for high yields. Also, the sod is generally more depleted ... especially in trace elements. All this must be remembered when you consider mixing your own rations.

"OK," you may say, "this is too complicated for me. I can just give my turkeys commercial feed." Go ahead, but before you buy a sack, look at the tag which shows the ingredients. You'll see such goodies as BHT, arsanilic acid and sulfaquinoxaline. Who wants a turkey dinner full of that stuff?

Take a second look at that list of contents and you'll see a few other elements "we at Toowoomba" weren't familiar with: like vitamin A, vitamin E sources, vitamin B-12, riboflavin, niacin and folic acid. People don't do very well these days without vitamins, and neither do turkeys.

How do you get by without giving your flock all this expensive or chemically treated feed? That's easy...you don't confine them. That sun porch idea is the equivalent of a 1940's pattern I once saw for a playpen with a covered top to keep the baby from climbing out. He couldn't stand up either, but that didn't matter.

(Incidentally, I'll leave it to someone with more time than I care to take to estimate the cost of a sun porch at today's prices. Start with 60 square feet of hardware cloth, since chicken mesh will give you turkeys with no feet and slats will give you a mess. It might help to have a brother in the hardware business if you don't want to go into debt.)

Confinement is popular now with many breeders of livestock...but not, oddly enough, with super turkey producers. They keep poults relatively restrained in houses, since the babies are so sensitive to cold and damp. But after the young birds have reached the age of two months or so, it's common to see a whole field of the critters, as far as the eye can reach, with simple shelters here and there. This is possible because the disease problem has been solved by inoculation (and, of' course, by drugs in the feed, but unless you have a flock of a thousand or more you shouldn't have to resort to that).

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