Raising Turkeys for Meat

By Ed Robinson
Published on October 8, 2020
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by Adobestock/Светлана Фран

Originally titled “Turkeys Can be a Profitable Sideline” in the March/April 1970 issue of MOTHER EARTH NEWS.

When you start producing food for your family, money will begin to lose its importance. You won’t be digging into your pockets every time you turn around. First, you will be producing a good part of your food and, secondly, you’ll be trading your surplus with your neighbors.

For example, we trade geese for turkeys with one of our neighbors, Tyler Long. Tyler and his father have always had a hankering to raise turkeys. For a long time they just talked about it, then a couple of years ago they started in doing it.

Unlike a lot of people, including a few farmers I’ve met, they were frank with themselves in admitting to begin with that they didn’t really know much about turkey raising. They determined to find out all about the newest and best ways of going ahead, start on a small scale. So they talked to any number of commercial turkey men, our county agent, and read everything they could get their hands on about turkeys.

Just to give you an idea of how well they’ve done, in 1942 the national turkey mortality rate from all causes was reported to be 28 percent. In 1943, when feed conditions were at their worst in 20 years, Ty kept his mortality rate down to 15 percent.

While it’s true that scientific turkey raising requires certain precautions not always necessary in chicken raising, if a few general principles are followed with care, turkeys can be a surprisingly easy, inexpensive and interesting way of increasing your food supply. Turkeys, incidentally, produce more meat per pound of feed than almost any other kind of poultry.

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