Brandon acquired five turkeys and several ducks. Brandon really enjoys ducks and their antics. He wants to breed them on his 3.5 acre hobby farm. The birds were a package deal.
Brandon was told the turkeys were a Royal Palm, a heritage breed (smaller, reproduce successfully). He was going to keep them at his place and breed them next year. Well, he realized very quickly they were not heritage breeds! The five of them were far too large for his pen. So he put them in one of my spare pens. He wasn't sure what he had. Once I got home, I knew.
They are production turkeys known as White Broad Breasted. They are far too large for Brandon's pen, and the cost to feed them grain only will be enormous. So, he gave them to me.
The two toms are about 50-55 lbs and the three females around 35-40. Emily, who is our poultry trainer, is teaching them to follow her out of the pen in the morning and back into it at night. They are still penned but will be allowed to free-range as soon as they learn the pen is their new home and learn to come when called.
Don't feel bad for them being penned until they learn. Their pen is 40 x 30 with an additional 100 square feet shelter. This is larger than the entire suburban backyard where they lived before.
This breed is generally unable to breed successfully so they have to be artificially inseminated. I used generally because there are exceptions, but it is nothing one can rely upon. I could let them drop off in weight to give them a better chance at breeding successfully, but there are no guarantees it would work.
I could also buy a heritage tom and keep two females. People who have done that say the result is a smaller but faster-growing bird with the coloring of the tom.
It takes a lot of feed to raise a turkey to full weight. It also takes a lot of feed to allow them to maintain that weight.
I will pray about it and think on it.
