Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
them alongside each other as follows: Bourbon Reds, commercial whites, Black Span-
ish, and finally Blue Slates on the end. Each pen had a 16 by 50 foot (5 × 15 m) outside
runway for the birds to get out and range over a reasonable distance. The door to the
outside runway was a foot (30 cm) off the ground so the birds had to hop up to go out.
This proved to be a problem for the commercial whites.
Water
The first thing we noticed when comparing commercial birds to the naturally mating
heritage strains was that the litter material of the very young commercial birds was much
messier and wetter, almost as wet as that of waterfowl young. This is because they are
putting on massive amounts of muscle and bone at a much faster pace than the heritage
turkeys. They need more water (and eventually more food) than other varieties. In fact,
the commercial whites consumed almost as much water as did the other three groups
combined. I found the commercial whites' pens needed cleaning twice as often as the
heritage birds'.
Temperature Regulation
We found that the commercial types required a more climate-controlled environment.
We quickly noticed that these birds did not do well beyond the brooder stage. When
they were five weeks old, and we moved them from the temperature-controlled brooder,
where they were happy, to the pen in the shed where temperatures fluctuated and daily
reached higher than 85°F (29°C), we observed them panting and consuming even great-
er amounts of water. This shed had no electricity for fans, as we had never needed them
for our heritage birds beyond the baby stage.
In adjoining pens, we noticed that the naturally mating, heritage turkeys were not
having any troubles at all; they were not panting or requiring more water and were
simply doing fine picking around and moving. We never lost one heritage to the weather.
Feed
Feed consumption rapidly changed but then so did the flocks' weight. To keep the study
as authentic as possible we used a commercial turkey starter. Each week we weighed
all of the birds to compare weight gain with food consumption. The commercial whites'
feed consumption continued to increase to almost double that of the heritage-type birds.
This would have been a great study for us had we been able to keep all 30 commercial
birds alive. It became increasingly difficult to collect data, as we kept losing the com-
mercial whites, creating an imbalance in the numbers per pen.
The commercial birds, we observed, had no desire to go outside and peck about for
bugs or greens. When they reached the age when I normally turn heritage birds out to
pasture — at eight to ten weeks — we just opened the pen doors to the outside runways
