how do you fatten a turkey for thanksgiving?

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The turkeys are no longer cute little babies, they are huge and the female is mean to everyone but me, (she chases my husband into the house when he comes home from work, and has nailed him a couple of times good), while this is funny for awhile it is getting old. The tom we have promised to a needy family, the hen will be a problem for me as I have grown attached. I have been feeding them dog food as this seems to be thier favorite and I never knew turkeys were such picky eaters (the chickens will eat almost anything). So now the big day is approching and I thought I should change the feed. What do you guys and girls say? and should I take tom off feed before I give him to my friend to butcher? thanks

-- Tina (clia88@newmexico.com), October 30, 2000

Answers

I've never heard of giving poultry dog food! I'd be afraid of what is in it especially if you are interested in producing as close to organic meat as possible. What I have done is feed them unmedicated turkey grower and add cracked corn to build up some fat the last few weeks. It seems to work well for us. I'm interested to hear what other tidbits of advice you'll get.

-- Denise (jphammock@msn.com), October 30, 2000.

I'd say free-choice of sunflower seeds and whole kernel corn. I suspect your husband will LOVE Thanksgiving dinner. Neither of my turkeys would touch dry cat food.

I have a friend south of here who works at a combination feed store and hardware. He would bring home broken bags of feed for his sheep. They once went through a pallot of weevil-infested dog food. His brother works for Fredo-Layes (spelling). He would bring by outdated packages of corn chips, etc., which the sheep also loved.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), October 30, 2000.


ALL my animals with the exception of cats love dog food. Chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, goats. They prefer it over their grain, to the point that I have to feed all the dogs inside to keep them from starving.

-- Teresa in TN (otgonz@bellsouth.net), October 30, 2000.

Hi, I go to the feed store and get 50# corn meal,confine the turkey and feed it only corn meal and water of course. Bye Thanksgiving you will have one plump tender turkey.

-- Daryll (twincrk@hotmail.com), October 30, 2000.

I would use cracked corn, you could mix in some dog food at first to get them going. Also I would pen them up til butchering time.

-- Mark (deadgoatman@webtv.net), October 30, 2000.


This may seem like an insane idea, but have you thought of turkey grower pellets? It's cheaper than dog food and formulated especially for turkeys. I free range my turkeys, and have free range chickens as well, so blackhead disease can be a problem. I use medicated grower and keep the turkeys in until afternoon so they will ingest enough medication to prevent blackhead. You take them off the medicated feed and put them on unmedicated about a week before slaughter. They will not be adversely affected by blackhead (which is actually a soil-borne parasite) during that week even if they do pick it up. GL!

-- Brad (homefixer@SacoRiver.net), October 31, 2000.

We pasture raise our turkeys on the same land we do chickens and, so far, have not had any disease problems. We start the turkeys on turkey starter, but once they get moved to the pasture pens they get mostly the same ration our pigs get, a mix done for pigs by our local feed mill. A good number of the Toms are pushing 30+ pounds, which is about as big as we can market them.

-- ray (mmoetc@yahoo.com), October 31, 2000.

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