Tips on How to Raise Turkeys

Reader Contribution by Rebecca Harrold
Updated on July 8, 2022
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Adobe Stock/sergio51143

Turkeys aren’t the same as chickens. Get some tips on how to raise turkeys from someone who learned from first-hand experience.

Editor’s Note: This article is a corrected version of an article previously posted, which incorrectly used the label “heritage”.

Be it out of curiosity or naivety, we decided to do a trial run of raising a backyard flock of turkeys for a summer. We already had a large flock of backyard chickens that laid plenty of egg to supply our needs with extras left over to sell to friends and neighbors.

So we were not complete novices when it came to poultry. But turkeys are not chickens. Beyond the basics of food, water, and shelter, these two species of birds have different behaviors and requirements.

As a result of our backyard turkey trial, we’ve learned some lessons and wish to pass along some key tips to anyone else who is considering raising their own Thanksgiving dinner. But before I proceed to the tips, I’ll quickly lay out the logistics of our turkey setup.

First, we ordered six-day-old turkey poults from a hatchery. Not the standard, big-breasted, flightless kind, but seven Artisan Gold turkeys, a breed with a tendency to roam and roost. Second, for the first four weeks we kept the turkey poults in a brooder before moving them outdoors to a mobile shelter.

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