Turkeys!

Here is my turkey journey. :) It was a fun and challenging experience. I started out with 15, but lost two of them. One died of gape worm at a young age, the other was killed by a coon or something. All in all though, they are really easy birds to raise! I would recommend raising them to anyone! Just don't keep them as long as I did, because the longer you keep them the more they cost. They eat a LOT!
At the end of this post I will have the money figures all written out so you can see what it cost.

April 25th I ordered 15 turkey chicks from Welp Hatchery ( http://www.welphatchery.com/ ). Caleb and Sam paid for some of the chicks because they wanted to raise turkeys too.

May 20th my little turkey chicks arrived very healthy and cute!

JUNE 3, 2014

For the first while we kept them in a watering tank with a light on them.

JUNE 20, 2014

A tom :)

This was the first time they were out in the grass, I believe

AUGUST 16, 2014

Getting bigger!

Weight in # on 8-20-14: 12, 14, 19, 16, 11, 14, 16, 14, 11, 10, 11, 13, 21, 13

SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

OCTOBER 8, 2014

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

OCTOBER 20, 2014

These toms were big, but not mean (we tried to be very nice to them). We sprayed paint on them so we could tell them apart.

Hen weight in # on 10-20-14: 23, 26, 22, 26, 27, 23, 27, 22, 26

Tom weight in # on 10-20-14: 38, 37, 41, 45

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Butchering day! It was sad to see them go, but this is farm life. Josh and Caleb took them to Duncan's Poultry ( http://www.duncanspoultry.com/ ) to be butchered. We ended up with 318# of turkey meat!

JANUARY 24, 2015

What do you do when the turkey just won't fit??

Get a bigger roaster is what we did. :)

32.2#

A normal 5 or 6 pound broiler...

Okay, here is all the pricing broke down...

Cost for Chicks:
$107.85 ($7.19 each)

Medicine (for gape worm):
$47.92 (two bottles of goat wormer)

Feed:
1,290# of feed = $464.64

Butchering:
$101.76

Total:
$722.17

Price per pound:
$2.27