Raise Your own Thanksgiving Turkey

Adding a couple of meat turkeys to your existing flock is an easy and economical way to grown your own Thanksgiving bird.

We are seasoned backyard chicken keepers and decided to give it a go at raising our own meat turkeys this year. The price of organic turkeys only goes up each Thanksgiving. Last year I bought an organic free-range turkey from someone locally for $100. This year we decided to try and do it all ourselves and we were surprised at how easy it was.

We brought home two white broad breasted turkey chicks from a local Craigslist poultry seller. It was springtime at this point and warm enough in our area not to have to mess with brooder boxes or warming lights. Plus we threw the babies right in with our current flock who didn’t seem to mind them at all. It wasn’t long before the turkey chicks found their place in the pack.

Our first mistake was that we bought the chicks a little too late for them to be fully grown by Thanksgiving, which takes around 20 weeks. Since we had two this wasn’t a major problem as each one ended up weighing in at around 11 pounds, which was plenty for our family at the time. We also just fed them regular chicken feed which has a lower percentage of protein, but this may have only contributed slightly as they free range on our property finding lots of bugs.

You may have guessed by now that this is not an “experts” guide to raising meat turkeys. Sometimes, if not all the time, you just have to go for it when it comes to hobby farms and small homesteads. Seasoned farmers with 40 acres of land passed down from generation to generation are literally a dying breed. The rest of us just need to jump in and get our feet wet if we are ever going to learn anything about growing your own food.

Growing your own food is hard. Really hard. Turkeys are easy, super easy. They are sweet and mellow and have a variety of cool vocalizations. They are also pretty dumb. It wasn’t long before our little turkey chicks outgrew the door into our chicken coop so we had to make do with new sleeping quarters for them. Every night they would try to go back into the old coop and even though they didn’t fit they would just lay on ground as close to the coop as they could get. So every night we had to pick them up and put them inside their turkey coop.

The biggest problem with raising turkeys is that they don’t “go up” at night like chickens do. Day after day we would have to go out at sunset and find them and lock them in for the night. Since our birds free range on our property in large runs and aren’t locked into enclosed pens this makes them vulnerable to predators that come out at dusk. We managed to get them in each and every night without loosing one. We had a trip during this time and my sister had to get the turkeys in at night for us. Even she was able to do it as a first timer.

The hardest part of course comes at the end. When it was time to harvest we just did what we had to do. My husband has a large pellet rifle that is powerful enough to knock an animal down with one shot to the head. We use the pellet gun every once in a while if an animal is too injured and is suffering or for occasional gopher hunting. They never know what’s coming and a sprinkle of feed on the ground is all it takes to distract them.

As far as meat bird processing we used a bare bones set up. Once the bird was dispatched we simply hung it up over a tree branch by the feet with a rope. First we slit the jugular and let it bleed out before we started just plucking the feathers out while the bird was still warm. White broad breasted turkeys don’t have that many feathers and even have some bald spots on them. It doesn’t take that much time to hand pluck.

Once the bird was plucked clean enough we used a large plastic folding table and lots of fresh running water from a hose to butcher. Again, this is not your detailed guide to meat processing with hundreds of dollars of equipment used. We tried out raising meat turkeys one year and guess what – we didn’t do it the next year. This was mostly because the turkeys need their own coop and we just don’t have the room for it right now. The most important step is to ice down the meat fully for a few days in a clean cooler with lots of ice and water. This sets the meat so it’s tender.

So there you have it. My not so detailed guide to raising our own Thanksgiving turkey. I would definitely recommended you give it a try! If you are squeamish about taking a life, let me explain something about broad breasted turkeys. They are bred for one thing only – to grow huge breasts. So huge that after around 20 weeks they start to have trouble walking. At 25 weeks they eventually can’t walk at all. So they were made for this, to nourish us and provide us with meat. I said a little blessing after we took their life, and moved on with mine.