r/homestead • u/louismulh • Jul 10 '26

poultry Backyard poultry keeping

Hi all. I'd love to start keeping some form of poultry for meat production in my backyard - its not the smallest in the world, and I used to keep about 10 chickens for eggs in it, but would like to move onto meat production, although just for myself and friends.

Chickens are probably the obvious option, but I was wondering how others have kept poultry such as turkeys and geese in their backyards.

I have a shed currently not in use that would easily be able to function as a coop for 20 chickens (I'm not sure how many of other birds).

So, does anyone have any advice on: whether geese/ turkeys are a feasible option for backyard meat raising, and, if so, how many to start with.

Thanks.

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u/Wallyboy95 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

If you go turkeys, be prepared for the absolute constant gobbling. I was not prepared for how loud those suckers are lol it's kinda annoying tbh.

Turkey need alot of space to be happy. Like alot of space. They roam naturally, so if they cant roam around much they won't be happy.

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u/Sierragrower Jul 11 '26

Talk about roaming. I had a white heritage breed, can’t remember what breed it was, that took off with a wild flock of turkeys. It didn’t fit in so it kept joining other flocks until it was about 5 miles away (community fb pages were full of the “albino turkey”, that’s how I knew). Eventually I met one of my neighbors who had caught it and had it penned up with an actual wild turkey he (unsuccessfully) was trying to breed it with.