Gobble Gobble...

[Mark A]

Well, it was graduation weekend for the broad breasted turkeys we raised this year. Started with 12, put 10 in the freezer. The other 2 suffered an unfortunate accident and were crushed... Average dressed weight of the males was a bit over 30# and the females was 27#. Put a little over 280# in the freezer.

After our initial chicken graduation day I realized that I had waaay better things to do then to pluck birds by hand. Was going to build a plucker but ended up short on time and ordered a XXL plucker. Really glad we did that. It got around 98% of the feathers and the carcasses were much cleaner than the chickens we did by hand. It was also much faster. The only real snag was packaging them. I'd hoped to vacuum pack them but the 15" bags (max width of my vacuum sealer) were too small. Fortunately I'd ordered some xl and xxl shrink bags. The xl worked and once we got the system down they were the bomb...

People say that turkeys are dumb and I'm not going to disagree but they were a hoot in general to raise. Very funny and when we let them out of their run they grazed well and came right back home. So, we will be doing them again.

We also ordered some heritage birds. They are much smaller but also very cool. Getting ready to have to cut their flight feathers as they are getting a bit adventurous. We lucked out with 2 girls and 1 boy so I'm hoping they will figure out how to make me some free turkeys.

I will probably do this again next year. Between them and the broiler chickens we have growing we will be fine on poultry for a while.

 

I left one unfrozen. It will be boned out and then ground. We like to cook big batches of taco turkey and put it in the freezer for easy taco nights.

 

Next up in our education are several types of pigs. I just need to get my fencing finished...

 

Mark

 

Edited September 11, 2017 by Mark A

[KahrMan]

Nice. Did not know turkeys would graze and come back to their pen. 

[sybo]

Interesting thread!!

[MacGyver]

I approve of this message.  

Y’all are still working on the land but haven’t moved out there yet, right?

[Mark A]

correct. Not from lack of desire but lack of money and time. Learning a lot though. We've got 50 meat chickens going now in chicken tractors. It really cuts down on the food bill when I keep them on fresh grass.

Started running the electric fencing for the first pig paddock Saturday. My reward for being a good boy was to fly to California today for a week of training. 

We learned a lot from the aquaponics system this summer. We somehow managed to keep most of the fish alive. After the fencing is up we are going to rebuild the hoop house to be a little stronger and start running veggies in the system again.

Mark

[monkeylizard]

I had to Google "chicken tractor". That's a cool idea. My grandparents just opened the pen and let them loose for the day and they'd all come back at dusk

Edited October 2, 2017 by monkeylizard

[Mark A]

Monkey, ours will do that but we aren't up there everyday. Our egg laying birds have a coop that has several large runs fenced in. They go out into the runs every day and back in the coop at night. The meat birds are in the tractors to keep them safe, allow them to browse fresh grass every other day or so and fertilize the pasture. They do an amazing job of prepping the dirt. It takes a couple of weeks for them to move 30-40 feet. When they've gone that far I till up the dirt and plant various cover crops that I use to build soil health. The land was used for hay production for years and so depleted of nutrients that the only way to get hay to grow the last 5-6 years was with heavy applications of chemical fertilizer.

So the meat birds and the turkeys chug their way across the land a little every day spreading happy poop. I wish I'd done this last year. I threw a lot of money away trying to broadcast seed cover crops. I had very poor germination and for any decent cover crop it cost about $100 per acre. Now that the birds are introducing fertility I can till a little at a time and do a much more controlled seeding. I've gone from about 5% success to near 100% and I get really great tasting poultry.

The ladies in the coop are doing their part as well. I alternate which runs they are allowed in and grow crops in the closed off runs. I need to get some time to post some pics. I stuck about 15 bales of hay in one of their runs and they had a blast being chickens and scratching at it. Now, roughly 3 months later that hay has degraded into a nice thin layer of topsoil with lots of fertility. it will get tilled soon and a crop seeded to overwinter.

It's been a lot of work but I've learned a lot. I can't wait to get up there full time.

 

Mark