Hi there, this is Julie7's daughter, Kimmie.


I raise all different kinds of birds, from poultry, to game birds, waterfowl, and have now acquired turkeys. I wanted to say that even during the summer, your hens will need a layer ration, that has the appropriate amount of protein and vitamins in order to keep your hens in top laying shape. Free-ranging is an excellent thing to do with your birds if there aren't any predators around. Keep in mind though, dogs aren't the only predators. If you have hawks or crows around, they tend to prey on smaller birds like chickens. Raccoons, moles, minks, and other things like that will make a meal out of a chicken, too. The hens should roost in the tree, but make sure they have nesting boxes around to lay in. A small shelter wouldn't be a bad idea, especially for winter, or just for safety reasons to lock them up at night. Also, it's not a bad idea to have crushed oyster shells for calcium, to develop the egg shell. Or in place of oyster shell, you can keep the egg shells you use and boil or bake them for a few minutes, crush them up and feed them back to the hens. Keep in mind though, the price of eggs is going up because the price of feed is rising. Five or six hens wouldn't cost too much to feed, but the more you have the more feed is needed. If you have any more questions, feel free to e-mail me at apostolic.princess@yahoo.com. Chickens are really a joy, I love mine and wouldn't trade them for anything... but there's also quite a bit of work involved. Good luck!

We feed layer mash year-round and fresh goat's milk. They live in a coop with a 5 gallon waterer and a hanging feeder. We put in an electric heater under the waterer in the winter so the water doesn't freeze. We have a 4' flourescent light on a timer to keep them laying all year. They have a roost to roost on. I had turkeys once that always roosted in the trees and it was a pain. You never knew where the poultry poop was dropped and they'd fly to a neighbor's property at times. For their own safety, they have a large pen and in the Michigan winter we close them into the coop. There are many good poultry raising books on the market, especially those by Rodale press.

We're suburban chicken farmers for the past..2 1/2 wks, its seems longer...but we're raising them for eggs and eventually meat. We can't kill them yet but if need be we will. I drove to Detroit last year and paid $65 last year at the Eastern market to get fresh Amish Turkey for Thanksgiving, our first...no hormones. I brought up to my mother about raising turkeys this year and she thought that was a horrible ideal. I think when we move back to Tennessee I will grow my own turkeys...living in the suburbs, though the turkey farm is in Livonia where we live, I think my neighbors wouldn't appreciate turkeys...but it is worth it. Just from what we paid...its definately worth it.

a year or two ago a friend ran over a wild turkey nest with a mower...he saved 11 of them and brought them to us. They were only a day or two old. We raised them, and butchered them one by one...wonderful! The wild turkey is all dark meat, with a large breast cavity. My roaster wouldn't fit them...so I used a pan with aluminum foil...you have to keep them well basted. But just wonderful!

At the price of turkey chicks in the catalog, I probably wouldn't raise them. But it sure was nice to have them for free.

Something to know about wild turkeys: many of them have cross-bred with domestic turkeys.  My husband says this is a problem in TN and other states around us because the domestic turkey is a very stupid bird.  Wild turkeys, by necessity, are much smarter.  But when, for instance, a domestic turkey gets loose and crossed with the wild, the wild turkey gets bigger, but also more stupid.  This is causing us to lose flocks of wild turkeys because they are no longer smart enough to survive.  So if you get another turkey and find it's not close to the same size, or it tastes quite different, then you may have gotten a cross-breed at some point in time.  The ones around our house, as far as I know, are still quite wild, and they're not terribly big.  Certainly nothing approaching the size of the domestic ones they always show on TV at Thanksgiving during the football games.  But if we ever needed to feed ourselves by hunting, we sure would know where to start.  Turkeys everywhere around here. 

These Amish ones were HUGE. They were so big we couldn't even fit it into our turkey roaster and it was so good. I never want a Butterball again. They cut off the heads for us at Eastern Market...I probably could cut off the head of a turkey better than a chicken...