By Kajsa Keane
Could this small behavior change be the missing link in the success of your turkey operation?
If you are constantly struggling with high mortality rates in your turkey brooder or undesirable carcass weights at the time of processing, you may consider adjusting your interactions with your turkeys. Spending time with your turkeys from the time they hatch to the time they are processed can have a huge impact on their growth and mortality rates.
Turkeys are precocial, meaning they are hatched in an advanced state, fully alert, ambulatory and able to feed themselves almost immediately after hatching. This is crucial, especially for ground-nesting birds. Turkeys, both wild and domesticated are born with a pre-programmed drive to imprint on to their mother. Essentially, it is a turkey’s gateway to survival. In cases where the hen is doing the hatching, they will chirp to the eggs, already teaching the developing poults what sound to listen for upon hatch. Once hatching has started, the mother hen continues to speak to her poults in order for them to find her and begin learning about the world as a turkey. From there the hen spends every waking moment with her offspring, showing them what to eat, where to drink and where to roost at night.
When we began domesticating turkeys, this crucial part of their survival, imprinting, was overlooked. We removed the hen from our production setups. As a result, we had higher mortality rates than chickens and turkeys began to be labeled as hard to keep alive and unintelligent. Domesticated turkeys are not as far removed from their wild brothers and sisters as other poultry. Heritage varieties being extremely close and then followed by the broad breasted production meat turkeys. We removed the imprinting that the mother hen provides with great success in wild and domesticated settings and expected turkeys to behave like, dare I say it?……Chickens.
Turkeys are obviously not chickens. Therefore, we should not expect them to behave like chickens. Even with decades of domesticated breeding programs, this desire for imprinting has not diminished. Luckily for us, humans can fill that need. Humans make excellent stand-ins for a mother turkey when it comes to filling the imprinting gap.
The most crucial time to begin imprinting on your poults is either from hatch or the moment you receive them from the hatchery. Because of their precocial behaviors, they are rearing to start exploring their world. Begin with staying in your border for a few minutes at a time, multiple times per day. Encourage eating and drinking right away, constantly placing the poults near their food and water. Simply sitting on the brooder floor or on a stool and allowing the poults to explore you and their enclosure provides a great deal of support. Ideally, twenty minutes a day has been found to be a beneficial amount to both heritage and broad breasted turkey poults.
While it may seem like a lot of extra work, how much is twenty minutes of labor per day worth in your farm operation? A study conducted by Fertrell found that when a person spends twenty minutes a day with broad breasted white turkeys, they were one pound heavier at the time of processing than the control group. Based on what you charge per pound for turkey at Thanksgiving or Christmas, what does one pound per bird processed look like on your bottom line? In addition, with the cost of day-old turkey poults, how many losses in the brooder would make 20 minutes a day worthwhile.
Through personal experience, my mortality rate in the brooder decreased from 15% to 2% on average. I have even enjoyed some years with a zero percent mortality rate in the brooder simply by allowing my children to have full access to the brooder turkeys. One year that I had a zero percent mortality happened to be my very first with turkeys. I did my best to protect these fragile poults only to have two persistent little girls who could not keep out of the stock tank I had as a brooder. I was desperate for them not to injure my precious (and expensive) heritage poults. Later, I found out that it was my daughters’ persistent need to play mother hen that saved the poults from my ignorance of turkey behavior. If you have responsible little farmers, turkey time would be a great job for them.
Along with appropriate nutrition, turkey friendly bedding and plenty of heat, adding imprinting will make for a fantastic turkey season. As if you needed an excuse to pack a lunch, grab a book and set up a seat in your turkey brooder.
Kajsa Keane has a deep passion for turkeys, especially her Heritage Bronze. A self-proclaimed “Turkey Intelligence Advocate,” Kajsa promotes the understanding of turkey behavior through education and humor on her TicTok, Facebook and Instagram pages. She runs her family farm, Keane Acres, with the help of her husband and two daughters in Ladonia, Texas. Her social media pages can be found at TicTok: @keaneacres, Facebook: Keane Acres and Instagram @keaneacrestx