How We Raise Turkeys to Sell on a Small Pastured Farm.

Yeah we made it another year of raising and selling our turkeys here on our mini farm. And from start to finish I'm showing you how we raise these turkeys out on pasture on a mini small scale family farm. This pasture is seven acres but for these turkeys we're only going to need about this much to raise on pasture. First let's start here at the post office where I picked up these turkeys. We got turkeys. We got more turkeys. These broad-breasted white turkeys are from McMurray Hatchery. The first year we raised turkeys we lost half of the turkeys. The second year we raised turkeys we lost two. And the only thing I did different was add minerals to their feed. And so this year we raised them exactly the same. And then their minerals I just kind of put a top dressing just I could just kind of sprinkle it on like uh. When I first brought them home I restricted their feed for 24 hours. That's the same thing we did last year. Not sure if that is the reason why we did well last year but I figured let's do the same thing. For the turkey feed I'm doing the same feed that I've always done in the past three years where I buy a thousand pound tote because when you're buying organic this is the most economical way of doing it than buying it per bag. We start the turkeys off on turkey starter and this is from New Country Organics with 26 percent protein. During that first week of them in the brooder we lost half. We ordered 30 for the first batch of turkeys and they actually sent us five extra. Thanks McMurray Hatchery. But that first week we lost about half. A couple weeks later McMurray sent us another batch of turkeys. This time they sent us 20 to replace those ones. Thanksgiving turkeys. Man I hope you guys stay alive. And we lost a few there that first week of in the brooder. And so after five weeks of them in the brooder it was time to move them out on grass. And so after we put them out on grass we ended up with 25 turkeys and we didn't lose any after that. Turkeys that are not as high strung as chickens. A little bit more chill. Let's cross our fingers guys that these guys are going to continue to thrive and not die. I mean let's keep them alive to Thanksgiving because it's coming. Hang in there. Fall's coming. Thanksgiving's coming. And then after we move them out on grass we're doing turkey grower which has 23 percent protein along with grit for their turkey teeth and add some poultry minerals from Fertro. These turkeys are maybe two weeks behind which is fine. We weren't planning on butchering them all on one day. We're not having one big graduation party. We're having multiple graduation parties. Now that they're on grass I can kind of breathe a little bit because from here we're going to keep moving them around. They have the sun. They have the fresh air and we're just going to keep moving them on grass which comes out to be about every few days. We're going to put the netting around them so that way we can let them out of here and let them roam around some more. All right the turkey turkey sandwiches. That tom turkey is already getting puffy man. Look at him. I'm still going to feed them their organic grains and water of course and now they have more room to eat some of this grass and bugs. Lots of crickets here. Lots of grasshoppers. Even though we are all fenced in here and energized, every night I put them all to bed. It's not a huge deal to do that. They're pretty easy to wrangle up. This is definitely was a peace of mind for me and helped me go to sleep at night knowing that they're in here and they're safe. When we're selling turkeys now there's definitely a different level of responsibility with them. We are investing our time with them and also the feed and just everything that comes along with selling meat. The toughest part about moving these turkeys is when I had to move this metal coop over uneven ground. The grass has grown really well here and so when that gets really long it's kind of hard to move this structure. But that's where the mini truck comes in. You just have to be careful to not run over a turkey. Which I didn't. I did not run over a turkey. Not even a foot got caught. It was all good. So we made our way. Started over there. Went all that flatter area. Came back up the hill and now we're going up on another flatter area. So we're just making our way here moving these turkeys. We're getting pretty close with these guys. I would say maybe a couple more weeks and we're going to start our first batch of graduation putting them in the freezer and then we'll do another batch until we're done and we're ready to go. It is a little more peace of mind when we put the netting around them. We're locking them up for the evening so every night we put them away in there and we move them. Put a net around them and so that way in the morning we're ready to go. For the water I'm doing it the same way how we raise our chickens. With a gravity-fed five-gallon bucket into a plaisant bale water. And with this many turkeys they will go through one five-gallon bucket a day. I observed something this year about the turkeys is that once they get curious about pecking something they will keep pecking it until nothing. If there's an ant hill they will peck that ant hill till there's no more ants. If they run out of feed and then I pour more feed in there they will continue to eat and eat and eat till that's all gone. Versus if I always have feed available to them and don't let it get to zero they will come back to it and graze. They won't be so much interested in the feed because they would be eating it all day like a like a buffet. So the trick is to always keep their feed full. You know kind of like Thanksgiving. Table full of food all day. You just kind of go and graze the cranberry sauce, the pumpkin pie. Now it's October and we made it. We started butchering these turkeys at about 16 weeks and then these last final turkeys on this last final move they are about 18 weeks. Now we could have raised them for longer but they would have just ate more feed and they would have been a lot bigger bird. We had just enough feed from that thousand pounds of organic feed. We just finished it off on the last week. Keep them calm. You know chickens you're kind of you kind of really have to get quick but these guys are so chill that you have to be chill right before you catch them. It does not have to be high stress. It does not have to be drama. It can be an easy day. The previous two processing days I would pick come in here and pick the bigger ones. So I'd be like okay that guy's big that guy's big but all these are going so there's gonna be none of that. So we're just gonna we're just picking them out putting them in the smaller chicken tractor because it's closer to where we're gonna process them. Probably not gonna do all these but one by one we're just gonna take them over there. So that way in the morning we're ready to go. Grab them by the feet and with your other hand put it on their back. They'll calm them down a little bit. All right we're just getting started this morning. Man you know it's 40 degrees not quite in the 30s yet. So we got to turn the scalder on. Getting up early. The thing is about this scalder there's less babysitting which you don't have to keep checking the temperature because it's you already set it up for that but it takes like an hour to heat up. Turkey fryer takes 30 minutes but there's more babysitting. You have to keep checking the temperature making sure it's at that 150. All right so something that took me about 10 years to figure out. Harbor Freight guys. Harbor Freight. Look at this thing. This is a foot pedal and we're going to use this for our plucker. So you plug it in back of this thing and then you plug the foot pedal to the outlet. This pedal is like 15 bucks. It's like it's kind of cheap. It's not meant for this. It's not meant for to get hit by water. It's more meant to like use it in your workshop. So I'm just going to stick some a bag over it with a good old zip tie. We'll make sure it stays on and then we have a foot pedal. Yeah. So that way we don't have to keep bending down and pressing the on and off this button. The next level would be every time you press that that automatically water would spray in here. It'll take me another 10 years to figure that one out. All right guys. Last morning with turkeys. Are we excited? Yeah. And cold. Cold? Our last poultry butchering of the year. Here's a rule of thumb. Whenever you're butchering any animal, if you feel any like kind of wetness around your lips or your face don't lick it. You never know what it is. All right Penelope. A big part of our farm right there guys. Little Miss P, our farm hand. She's been doing this since she was four years old. Okay so this cooler, there's six turkeys in there for meat chickens. That'll hold about 25 to 30 depending on size. So definitely just need more more coolers for the turkeys. Now we've never taken poultry to a processor. We've always done it here. So I can imagine just doing it ourselves on this micro farm scale. You probably have better control of how the animal's being processed. We always do quality control to make sure the bird looks presentable for the table. And that's it on our day three of processing turkeys. All right guys and that's it. That concludes our pillow fight season. Yeah our last poultry processing day of the year. So happy that's over. But man so satisfying putting all that meat in the freezer. We got our turkeys in here now. Now I gotta go send out emails for those for all you guys who put a reservation on a turkey. So thank you. All right so between our pigs, chickens, and turkeys all these freezers are full now. We got this one over here, Caitlin, William. So we're balling for turkeys over here. The biggest one was 19 pounds and the smallest one was 11 pounds. So that's pretty good. Last year I think the biggest one was 24 pounds. We kept three for ourselves and sold the rest. So here we are. There's more in here. Sandy's order. So thank you guys for purchasing a turkey. You know it takes a lot man. It takes a lot to raise any animal and then it's one thing you raise it for yourself and then it's another thing when you're doing it and to raise to make a profit. It's just a whole other thing. A whole other thing to figure out. So thank you guys for supporting us with these turkeys and even the chicken and pork that you guys buy and everything else. But yeah we really appreciate it. It takes a ton of work to do all this but you know we're trying. We're trying to make it a go and and see how it goes and we're just keep we're just going to keep on learning and learning and even with the turkeys keep trying to figure them out and just improve every all these processes that we do. Always trying to improve every every single year. So thank you guys for watching. Thank you guys for supporting and yeah in case in case I don't see you happy Thanksgiving. And then in about six months we'll get more turkeys and we'll do it all over again.