Turkey Troubles

August 2024 vol. 2

For the past several years, we’ve happily raised Thanksgiving turkeys. Turkeys are precocious little critters and though they’re less than cute, they’re a welcome addition to our menagerie. As we sell our turkeys FRESH, it’s very important that we get our production just right – ensuring they reach market weight a few days before Thanksgiving.

There aren’t many options for sourcing turkey poults. Broad Breasted White Turkeys (because they have such large chests) have to be artificially inseminated – limiting the number hatcheries that sell them. And because there is a large demand for the holidays, it’s necessary to get your order in the year prior.

For the past few years, I’ve been happy with our turkeys from Meyer’s Hatchery – a very respectable and widely known hatchery out of Ohio. They have good prices, deliver on time, and have very robust birds.
We’ve learned a lot in the past 5 years of raising turkeys, and the primary lesson is that timing is everything. In order to get market weight birds the week of Thanksgiving, ideally they’re hatched the first week of August. If I schedule an early hatch (late July), then the birds will be upwards of 20 pounds, and if it get’s too far into August, then the birds will be just over 10 pounds. There are very few families wanting a behemoth bird, and though many want a 13 pounder, it’s just not very profitable to produce them as it cost the same to raise and process a big bird as it does a smaller one (less a few pounds of feed). Through trial and error, we’ve determined that the ideal hatch date is the first week of August. Of course that’s also the hottest days of the year, so It’s a bit risky getting mail order birds shipped that week. We’ve had some issues with birds not making the journey, but the birds we’ve been getting from Meyer’s seemed to have a much better survivability rate than some other hatcheries we’ve tried.

So when I received a phone call from Meyer’s on August 5th stating that they had to delay my order till the following week, I was a bit nervous. However, they assured me that I would be receiving all the birds the following week, and that they would be all males. Male turkeys, being about 5 pounds heavier than the females, would offset the lost week of production, so I was content to wait a week. As we run our turkeys alongside our broiler chickens, and I had intentionally started a new batch of broilers to coincide with the delivery of the poults, getting the birds a week late would also present some issues with my broiler production, but I could make it work.

When our new hatch date rolled around, I was anxiously sitting by the phone waiting for the post office to call. By 10am, I was getting nervous and reached out to the post office only to learn that they had not received my poults. Ideally I’d get them next day, but no worries, we’ve had them take two days before and everything worked out. The following day, I got the much anticipated phone call, and happily received my box of turkey poults. Peering through the vent holes, I could see that a few of the turkeys were dead, but they send extras in the event this happens, and I had ordered a few extra to account for losses. However, when I got home and went to put them in the brooder, I was shocked to learn that there were only half of what I ordered. I only had 40 instead of 80, and of those only 34 were alive.

I quickly called Meyer’s Hatchery, with the hopes that they had sent them in two separate shipments, but they had no record of shipping two boxes. Upon further investigation, the packing slip showed that the poults had actually shipped from another hatchery in West Virginia. It seems that Meyer’s outsourced the order to Aviagen Turkeys. With my frustration mounting, I called Aviagen. Whoops, they had mistakenly only sent me one box. The second box never got processed. They assured me they could get me my poults the following week – two weeks later than ideal. Not having many choices, I consented to the proposed remedy. I wasn’t happy, but farming isn’t easy.

A few hours later I went out to do my rounds, and was disheartened to discover several more dead poults. By the end of the day I was down to only 12 remaining birds. My resignation to reality quickly turned to shaking my fist at fate. Having half a batch be undersized was painful enough, but when I learned that the replacements would not be all males, I decided to cut my losses and cancel my order.

Bottom line – for the first time since we started, we will not be offering Thanksgiving Turkeys. I’m just as frustrated as you are. Turkeys go a long way towards paying the bills, and they add a bit of comic relief to the daily grind. I pray the 12 remaining poults survive the 100 days to Thanksgiving. If so, we’ll be offering those up for sale, but as we can’t make any guarantees. Hopefully, we’ll resume turkey production next year without any hitches.

See you at the Market!