Home » Home & Style » Rural Country Living » Gobbling the Turkey!

Gobbling the Turkey!

©

Winter holidays on your homestead can be a wonderful family experience. Long lost relatives, trundle beds, children’s gleeful laughter, woolly hats and mittens, crackling fires, and the spicy aroma of hot toddies warming your hands after a snowball fight with the kids in the yard. These are the events that memories are made of.

Have you ever pondered raising your own turkeys and hams for family feasts and get-togethers? Raising organic, hormone-free meat can be wonderfully rewarding, both in compliments from your family and health wise. The quality and flavor of the meat is unsurpassed—and actually growing and butchering your own meat gives one a certain pride and tells the world that you’re on the road to self-sufficiency. Coupled with abundant organic produce from your garden—fruits, vegetables, juices and spiced-apple cider; you’ll have a meal fit for royalty.

RAISING TURKEYS

Turkeys are fairly easy to raise. Bronze turkeys do better in cold climates, but I’ve raised white turkeys with no problems at an elevation of 7,000 feet. One can either order from a poultry supplier or buy directly from your local feed store. I bought mine for about $2.50 a piece and have had no fatalities. The baby turkeys have to be kept warm—either under a heat-lamp in the barn, or in the house, until they grow head feathers. Proper feeders and waterers are a must, as feed will be trampled, soiled and wasted, if regular saucers and bowls are used. Their feed consists of turkey starter and plenty of fresh water until they grow their head feathers, then they graduate to turkey grower until they are of table size. Turkey finisher is fed for the last month, before slaughter. Make sure that the feed is 100% certified organic—or you will not have truly organic meat.

It’s a good idea to clean out the babies housing EVERY day to cut down on the foul smell—please excuse the pun. Having raised several hundred chicks until they grew their head feathers, I know, by experience; slacking on that chore, will make you want to move out and live in the hay barn! When head feathers are well and truly visible, the fowl can be kept outdoors in their own enclosure with a shelter of some kind, until they are big enough to run with the flock (if you already have one). Please don’t move them directly in with the flock. The poor things will become the lowest in the pecking order, and you’ll find them huddled in a corner, scared to death—unable to get food and water, because of the big fat hen that struts around thinking she owns the coop!