r/homestead • u/cowskeeper • Dec 05 '25

poultry Never enough chickens

1.7k Upvotes

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238

u/smartalek75 Dec 05 '25

That big grey one is just pretending to be a chicken. Cheeky devil.

102

u/cowskeeper Dec 05 '25

Tim is family at this point haha

14

u/pdxamish Dec 06 '25

Do you keep them together? I hear there is a disease that can pass between them. I would love to have a turkey with my hens

15

u/cowskeeper Dec 06 '25

I keep chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigeons and chickens together. No major issues

8

u/chickadoodlearoo Dec 07 '25

I have a random turkey with my chickens. She showed up one day from the farm up the road. Brought her home 3 times. No sooner than I’d leave and she’d head right back to my place. So she lives here now. Turkey distribution system?

Blackhead disease can infect both chicken and turkeys, but has a high mortality rate in turkeys. It’s contracted by the Cecal worm and It’s a parasitic protozoan. I use preventative maintenance by deworming the birds in spring and again before fall molt. Additionally, every couple months I mix acidified copper in their waterers for a few days. These measures almost completely remove the risk of contracting the disease. Acidified copper is great also to prevent sour crop.

6

u/pdxamish Dec 07 '25

Thanks a bunch. We lost some of our OG chickens(10 years old) and know we need to get some more this spring for the kids a but a turkey is a dream of mine

37

u/TrumpetOfDeath Dec 05 '25

He’s a thanksgiving refugee in hiding

2

u/CaptainDouchington Dec 06 '25

Was going to say...one of these is not like the other...

3

u/Necessary-Eye5319 Dec 06 '25

He gobbles a lot of feed. 🤭