Turkey
The bare head changes colour with mood, from pale to bright red. Only the males gobble, and wild turkeys roost in trees and fly well over short distances.
Photo by James St. John, CC BY 2.0
Overview
The most important thing about keeping turkeys is whether you also keep chickens. Blackhead disease, caused by the protozoan Histomonas meleagridis, kills 80 to 100 percent of the turkeys it infects, while chickens carry it largely without getting ill and act as an amplifying host for the cecal worm that spreads it. There is no approved treatment in the United States, so control means keeping turkeys off ground chickens have used.
Beyond that they are rewarding birds. They are bigger and more demanding than chickens, they need higher protein feed, and they are far more personable than their reputation suggests.
Temperament
Curious, calm and much more interested in people than a chicken is. Turkeys follow their keeper about, investigate everything, and individual birds are recognisably individual in a way a flock of hens is not.
Stags display and can be pushy in the breeding season, and a full grown stag is a large bird to have leaning on you. Keep them as a small flock, since they are sociable and a single turkey does poorly.
Care and grooming
A high protein feed, higher than a chicken's, especially while they are growing. Getting this wrong is the usual reason young turkeys do badly.
The rest is standard poultry work with one difference, which is that everything about parasite control matters more. Rotate ground, keep it dry, and do not let turkeys use land that has carried chickens, because the cecal worm eggs behind blackhead persist in soil for a long time.
Living and exercise
Six square feet of coop and twenty of run each, which is roughly double what a chicken needs, plus perches strong enough to hold the weight.
Heritage breeds fly well and will roost in trees given the chance, so a covered run does two jobs. Keep the ground dry and rotated, keep them away from chicken ground, and give them height to perch on, because a turkey that cannot get up off the floor at night is an unsettled bird.
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