Yesterday I mentioned that we keep Turkeys - we started off a few years ago and used to buy in our poults (chicks) and then rear them on and then we would kill them for Christmas and sell to friends and family.
Then we started keeping a few back and breeding from our own stock, we would then rear them as usual and instead of killing all the Turkeys we would keep some to breed from.
My husband decided that we should keep Narragansett Turkeys as the are a rare breed so we purchased eggs from ebay and hatchd some ourselves - we have a few other breeds as well but mainly stick to Narragansett.
We now only sell to family and we don't rear as many - the rules around slaughter of poultry are getting stricter and the cost of rearing is getting higher so we now sell off the poults (so we don't have the expense of rearing them) and keep some for us to have at Christmas.
We have a friend through Suffolk Smallholders who had a Turkey Stag from us a few years ago but she was not sure if he was doing his job this year so she has borrowed one of ours so she can try to get some chicks hatched. We took the stag over in the back of the car - we do have a large bird carrying box but as he is so big we thought he would more comfortable in the back of the car with some tarpaulin and straw!!
Here is a picture of 2 of our stags
We have some Turkeys eggs in the incubator at the moment - here is a picture of some of our chicks from last year
Turkey poults are very difficult to rear - their main aim in life is to die!! They do all sorts of stupid things that a chicken would not do such as laying in the water to drown or staying away from the heat lamp so they die from the cold.
But for all my moaning - the meat tastes amazing. We rear ours for at least 7months before they are killed so they are very slow growing plus we have a 1 acre field that they have the run of so their quality of life is so much better than a commercially reared bird.
I thought I would copy a few other smallholders and list what we have sold from the gate:
Today we sold:
9 Goose Eggs = £5.00 (we sell for 50p each but someone paid extra)
Handsome birds! In all our years of smallholding we only kept turkeys once, don't know why.
ReplyDeleteSome would call them ugly - I think they are just different!
DeleteLovely looking fellas, I havent heared of this breed before, good luck with your hatchlings, when are they due, I would love to raise a few turkeys when we move but its the one bird hubby dosent like, he dosent like the dangly bits and he had a confrontation with a stag some years ago and swore he wouldnt have any ever.
ReplyDeleteMy DH is in charge of all things hatching related and he tells me they are due on 8th May.
DeleteWe have kept a lot of turkeys over the years and many of them have been stags and we have never been attacked - I wonder if the stag was protecting a female? It would be a shame if you had to do without - could he learn to love them again?
We were out and about visiting a farm and he got between the stag and female, the stag was doing his impressive stuff and hubby was trying to take pics of him, it was funny at the time. I might get a few females for the table after we move but a male is out of the question.
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