- Popcorn, no butter or salt
- Potatoes, cooked only – no green peels
- Pumpkin, raw or cooked, seeds and flesh
- Summer Squash
- Sweet Potatoes / Yams – cooked, no green peels
What is the best food in Turkey?
When it comes to Christmas dinner, the dominating force is usually the turkey. But if we were all truly honest, isn't it the side dishes we're actually looking forward to most? Pigs in blankets, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, roasted parsnips, stuffing... these tasty jewels beside the golden bird are arguably the best bit.
What are natural food sources for turkeys?
- Season: Turkeys, like all animals, select food sources that are most abundant and easiest to reach. ...
- Geography: A bird's location greatly influences the foods it can find. ...
- Age: Young wild turkeys can forage for themselves very quickly, and the hen will lead her brood to the best available food sources. ...
What do you feed a wild turkey?
What Do Wild Turkeys Eat
- Acorns
- Beechnuts
- Hawthorns
- Crabapples
- Cherry
- Blackberry
- Dogwood
- Sumac
- Wild grape
- Chestnut tree
What is the average feed conversion ratio for turkeys?
With an average butcher weight of 8.82 lbs. per bird, this calculates to an approximate feed conversion ratio of 7.9 lbs., carcass weight as choice feeding on the growth, feed conversion ratio (FCR), blood biochemical attributes, and immune competence traits of growing turkeys under intensive system.
What is the best thing to feed wild turkey?
FEED turkeys cracked or whole kernel corn, sunflower seeds, oats, wheat, or non-medicated commercial poultry or turkey rations. FEED turkeys daily by broadcasting food at a rate of 2 large handfuls (or 1/2 cup) per turkey per day.
What can I feed my wild turkey?
Acorns, hickory nuts, beechnuts, or walnuts, either cracked open or swallowed whole. Seeds and grain, including spilled birdseed or corn and wheat in agricultural fields. Berries, wild grapes, crabapples, and other small fruits. Small reptiles including lizards and snakes.
What kind of feed attracts turkeys?
Feeding Wild Turkeys the Natural WayPlant Native Oaks: Acorns are a key food source for wild turkeys. ... Plant Other Nut and Berry-Producing Plants: In addition to oak acorns, other staples of the wild turkey diet include beech nuts, pecans, hickory nuts, crabapples, and hackberries.More items...•
Can you put out corn for turkey?
Since wild turkeys are a ground-feeding type, sprinkling cracked corn in an open area of dirt is a sufficient way to attract them. Seeds- Another easily attainable food source, seeds provide even more nutrition for wild turkeys. Mixing seeds and cracked corn makes a great spread out meal.
What should you not feed a wild turkey?
It seems like you can feed anything to your backyard birds including poultry and turkeys....Here is some food that you should not feed to turkeys:Low-Quality chicken feed.Dairy foods.Onions.Raw meat.Chocolate.Processed foods.Fruit pits and seeds.Tomato and eggplant leaves.More items...
Do turkeys eat deer corn?
In addition to chufa and clover, specialists with Clemson Extension Forestry and Natural Resources recommend field corn, oats, ryegrass and sorghum. Turkeys will forage on field corn from fall into winter; be sure to plant at least an acre to allow enough corn for other wildlife foragers, such as deer.
How do you attract turkeys quickly?
Turkeys are omnivorous and will sample a wide variety of foods. To attract turkeys to your yard, you can provide them with a large ground feeding station containing cracked corn or mixed birdseed. Turkeys will also happily clean up any spills under hanging feeders you may have up for other birds.
How do I attract more turkeys?
Turkeys love acorns and pecans, as well as dogwoods, huckleberries, blueberries, and other fruits found in the understory. Planting food plots: Follow these tips to establish food plots as a supplement to natural forage. Food plots can also be used to increase turkey sightings and harvest success.
Do turkeys eat whole corn?
Whole corn is an excellent choice if you want to feed them. Cracked corn works good too but tends to get covered up quickly if it is snowing or blowing. I've found they also like alfalfa hay, strange as it might seem. They get right into it and eat the green leaves and flowers.
How do you bait a turkey for hunting?
0:283:36Easiest Way On How To Attract Turkeys! - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipOnce there's regrow and roughly. Two weeks three weeks something like that they start to grow willMoreOnce there's regrow and roughly. Two weeks three weeks something like that they start to grow will come through here and we will spray them suckers with antler grow and the NPK super-attractive.
Is it OK to feed wild turkeys?
Never deliberately feed wild turkeys to attract them to your property or keep them around. Turkeys can survive very well on natural foods and do not need handouts from people.
Can turkeys eat cat food?
Some cat food can have ingredients that aren't particularly good for birds — things they can't digest, their body can't fully process or is just too much for them. But it can depend on the food, the bird and how much it eats. Filling up on cat food also could stop them from eating the foods that are good for them.
Can you feed wild turkeys bread?
Although they sometimes ate bread or popcorn, they appeared to have trouble recognizing these items as food. During the winter, wild turkeys are frequently on short rations, as their food is occasionally buried under snow.
How can I bring a turkey to my property?
6 Ways To Attract Turkeys To Your YardProvide Turkeys with a Varied Diet Year-Round.Provide a Water Source.Install Shelters and High Perches.Provide Nesting Sites.Limit Your Use of Pesticides.Lock Up your Pets.Attracting Turkeys May Be Illegal in Some States.Turkeys Can Cause Damage to Your Property.More items...•
What to feed a turkey?
Here are some common snacks often offered to turkeys: 1 Watermelon#N#This is an excellent summertime treat to offer your turkeys as it can help keep them hydrated even on the hottest days. All parts of the watermelon are safe to feed your turkeys, including the flesh, seeds, and rind. 2 Apples#N#Most turkeys love apples and will enjoy pecking at them cubed or sliced. Seeds should be removed if possible, but small amounts of seed ingested on occasion are not dangerous to your birds. Applesauce is a great snack option for young birds as well! 3 Peas#N#This is probably going to be the table scrap your turkeys enjoy the most! Peas are a healthy snack to offer your birds and can be offered dried, cooked, or frozen. You can even mix peas into your regular feed ration for extra protein! 4 Spinach#N#If you really want to offer spinach to your turkeys as an occasional treat or snack, doing so in small amounts is fine. Spinach can block the absorption of calcium, leading to bone density issues over the long term if fed in abundance.
What is the best food for turkeys?
Many custom rations for turkeys include a variety of grains and seeds, including: Corn. While corn is not the most nutritious food on its own, it can be a great option for providing fat and overall energy. This can be especially useful in the winter, so corn is common in most winter rations.
What Is Fermented Feed?
Fermenting is a way to take advantage of lactic acid fermentation in your commercial or custom mixed turkey rations. It is a simple and highly effective way to make digestion easier on your flock, leading to larger-sized birds with less feed required.
How much protein do turkeys need?
As turkeys grow, their protein requirements change. Young turkeys require around 28% protein from the start to ensure they grow quickly and safely.
What do turkeys eat?
Their exact diet depends on the season and available food and their age and stage in life. Turkeys eat insects, snails, slugs, lizards, snakes, and grasshoppers. They enjoy nuts, acorns, seeds (including many wild weed seeds), corn, grain, and peas. They eat berries, flowers, bulbs, foliage, and fruit.
How to attract turkeys to your farm?
Attracting wild turkeys can be as simple as clearing out some dense brush and leaving large trees available for roosting or as elaborate as planting a diverse selection of plants to attract them. Native nut-bearing and fruit-bearing bushes, shrubs, and small trees help attract turkeys, quail, and deer to the area as they will feed, rest and nest in areas where food is abundant.
Why mix your own feed ration?
Mixing your own feed ration can be the best option if you want to focus on a more cost-effective sole ingredient to provide the right nutrients or if you have a larger flock and prepackaged bags of feed are not enough . Additionally, mixing your own ration can be a great way to ensure your flock is receiving only organic or antibiotic-free grains.
What to feed turkeys in spring?
One of the first things the majority of turkey hunters and managers do is head to their local feed store, stock up on chopped corn, wheat, or grain sorghum, and spread it out in areas turkeys frequent. The intent is to not only draw turkeys from adjoining properties onto yours, but to also hold the turkeys currently calling your property home, all with the hopes of imprinting them and convincing them to stay long after the food source is cut off. A fat turkey is a happy turkey, and this strategy seems to work in most occurrences.
How to manage a wild turkey?
People forget that turkeys need to be managed just as whitetails need to be managed. In many ways, turkeys require more tender loving care than whitetails. For instance, wild turkeys are not as tolerant of thick understory as is the whitetail deer, so you need to control the underbrush as well as provide them wide travel corridors to use. To get a feel for what life is like as a turkey, get on your knees and see if traveling through a timber stand would be possible. If not, then you may want to either consider prescribed burning or an herbicide treatment to reduce some of the understory.
How to get a feel for turkey life?
To get a feel for what life is like as a turkey, get on your knees and see if traveling through a timber stand would be possible. If not, then you may want to either consider prescribed burning or an herbicide treatment to reduce some of the understory.
Can you feed wild turkeys off season?
That is a temporary fix, and has not been proven to hold turkeys long-term. Do not get me wrong, off-season supplemental feeding is sometimes necessary, but should be a small part of the overall management plan. Make sure you provide a “total solution” for your turkeys by giving them all the food, water, and cover they could possibly need
Can you feed a turkey gobbler?
Certain states allow year-round and unconditional feeding, and a turkey hunter can harvest a gobbler over artificial feed if he so chooses (which to me personally sounds like no sport at all). However, the majority of the states do not allow feeding during the spring turkey season or have stipulations in place that make it almost impractical. The issue in question here is not whether feeding should be allowed or not, it is if you should feed your turkeys before the season starts. Let’s dive into this issue.
Is a fat turkey good for chufa?
A fat turkey is a happy turkey, and this strategy seems to work in most occurrences. Just as a whitetail manager uses summer supplemental feeding to take the pressure off his corn or soybean crop (and benefit the herd's health), feeding your turkeys can help save some of your chufa patches or other crops for the season.
What is the best feed for turkeys?
Besides commercial feeds that contain high levels of protein, turkeys can be supplied with alfalfa hay as their main feed. In contrast, inadequate or excess protein may be detrimental to the health of turkeys.
How to feed a turkey?
1. Grazing on pasture. Intake from pasture or range grass (grass from 4 – 6 inches long) accounts for 50% of their diets. Wild turkeys often forage near wooded areas. Therefore, you should provide them with ground feeding areas or platform feeders which is large, low enough to accommodate these large birds.
What do turkeys eat?
In the wild, turkeys forage regularly and will eat many various kinds of natural food such as insects, fruits, berries, nuts, seeds, plants, and small vertebrate animals. Turkeys often mainly rely on acorns during the winter season because other alternative food sources may be rare.
Why do meat birds eat rations?
For meat birds, rations are typically formulated to achieve good health and maximum productivity but not too fast to cause any health-related issue.
Can turkeys forage in pasture?
Some farmers allow turkeys to forage freely through pastures and fields or sprinkle vegetable scraps, or toss a handful of mealworms in order to encourage them to forage. A simple tip you need to keep in mind is that your turkey can access fresh, clean, and available water at all times.
Do turkeys need more protein than chickens?
Turkeys can be a fun addition to a backyard flock if you are looking for company, nutritious meat, and eggs. Generally, a turkey needs more protein than a normal chicken. Check out my article below to know about turkey feed and effective methods to raise a fat and healthy flock. 1.
Do market birds need high energy?
Grow market birds require high energy level feeds. However, when feeding potential breeding stock, in order to avoid body fat in birds, the feed should contain a large amount of fiber. When it comes to breeding turkeys, diets with high protein will negatively affect the hatchability of eggs.
What is the best feed for a turkey?
The best feed for turkeys is a 28% unmedicated turkey starter for day old poults, which will be gradually transitioned to a 12% unmedicated maintenance ration for adult turkeys.
What is 12% turkey feed?
Once your turkeys get to adult size, they are fine with a 12% feed as a maintenance ration. 12% non medicated poultry feed should be really easy to find at most any feed store. Notice that 12% is a maintenance ration, not a breeding/laying ration.
What is the best feed for a day old poult?
For your day old poults, use 28% feed or a gamebird starter which will be a 30% feed. Poults need a much higher protein feed than most other young birds and the appropriate day old poult feeds are noticeably more expensive than what would be fine for chickens.
What is starter feed for poults?
As the name “starter” suggests, it is the first feed your new poults need. It will be a bit higher in protein than the grower and come in smaller pieces, called a crumble, so it’s easier for the poults to eat.
Does turkey feed change as it grows?
Protein % needed will change as turkey grows. You’ll notice in the table at the beginning of the article, the percent protein in the feed changes as the poults grow. This is normal for any feed ration.
Can you use turkey starter instead of broiler feed?
Sometimes it can be hard to source a higher protein feed for your poults, and it’s easy to think well what about using a broiler feed, instead? Short answer: Don’t do it. The only acceptable substitute for turkey starter is gamebird starter.
Do turkeys need different feeds?
Turkeys need different feeds depending upon their age, whether they are young poults or adults, and the time of year, mainly are they on a maintenance ration or are they in breeding season. What is the best feed for turkeys, based on their age, and when do turkeys need switched to a different feed?
What is the best food for turkeys in the fall?
Noted wild turkey researcher Mike Chamberlain says, “Oaks, across the species range, are the most important fall / winter food for turkeys.”. A good stand of oak trees can make a difference in wild turkey winter survival.
What is the food plot for wild turkeys?
After clover, Sumner’s second favorite food plot for wild turkeys is chufa. A member of the sedge family, chufa is attractive to turkeys not for its leaf or seed, but for the tubers it grows just under the surface. Once turkeys discover the tubers, they will spend the entire fall and winter scratching at the soil to uncover them.
What is the best cover for turkeys?
One of the best cover habitats for wild turkeys, from nesting, to the poult stage, and even for adult birds, according to Sumner, is a good stand of native warm season grass (NWSG). These grasses grow in thick bunches with an open structure in between, leaving a maze of alleys and paths beneath the grass canopy and allowing free movement within the stand. For those reasons NWSG provides prime nesting sites, excellent escape cover, and effective brood rearing habitat for a variety of game birds and grassland wildlife species, including turkeys.
What are the threats to wild turkeys?
One of the biggest threats to wild turkeys is nest and poult production. From nest predators like raccoons, opossums, and skunks, to poult predation by foxes, coyotes, bobcats, and hawks, a wild turkey faces an uphill battle to survive from the second their egg is laid.
How to keep turkeys on your property?
One of the best ways to hold turkeys on your property and increase population numbers, Sumner says, is to plant food plots. His favorite is clover. Turkeys utilize clover plots both for their tender growth and for the tremendous number of insects they hold.
When do wild turkeys eat plums?
Sumner says he has watched mixed flocks of wild turkeys fill their crops with plums from late spring through early fall, depending on the tree variety. He recommends the Chickasaw plum variety as a fast-growing, high-production tree perfect for all wildlife, including wild turkeys.
Do turkeys eat dogwood?
Dogwood flowers signal peak gobbling times for many spring turkey hunters — but the leaves and fall fruits from the tree signal food to a wild turkey. According to James Earl Kennamer from the National Wild Turkey Federation, turkeys are particularly fond of dogwood fruit, and the berries are especially important to wildlife during years with poor acorn crops. For maximum fruit production, choose dogwood varieties native to your area of the country.
How to learn about wild turkey hunting?
As with taking on any new venture, one of the best ways to learn is by finding a mentor, or someone more knowledgeable than yourself. Many state wildlife agencies have programs for new hunters. If you are fortunate enough to have an NWTF chapter in your area, you may be able to find someone willing to take you under their wing (no pun intended) to teach you about wild turkey hunting. If you are more comfortable seeking guidance on social media, there are numerous groups dedicated to wild turkey hunters and outdoor enthusiasts. Whichever route you go, make sure your mentor is someone who practices safe handling of firearms and makes you, the student, feel most comfortable in the woods.
What are the best calls to make when turkey hunting?
Beginners usually find a box call the easiest to get a consistent sound. There are diaphragm or mouth calls, pot and striker calls made with glass or slate, box calls, wingbone calls and many others.
What is the most common species of Eastern Toms?
Easterns are the most widely distributed subspecies east of the Mississippi River. They are also the most abundant. They can be found in 38 states and numerous Canadian provinces. They are characterized by chestnut-brown tips on their tail feathers and white and black bars on their wings. Adult males or toms weigh 18-30 pounds while females or hens typically weigh in around 8 to 12 pounds. Eastern toms have what is considered the strongest gobbles of all subspecies. They also tend to have the longest beards of all the subspecies.
Why did the Osceola turkeys remain in the woods?
These areas supported turkeys because topography made them inaccessible and kept legal and illegal hunting to a minimum. Inaccessibility also made logging and agriculture difficult, so these areas remained forested. As a result, biologists began to associate the wild turkey with big timber, but that wasn't exactly accurate.
What is the National Wild Turkey Federation?
Welcome to the National Wild Turkey Federation where sharing our passion of hunting wild turkeys with new hunters is part of the mission. The NWTF's Turkey Hunting 101 is considered the premier educational tool to learn everything you need to know about wild tur keys, their behavior and planning a successful hunt, and we’ve compiled all that information here.
Why do hunters use choke tubes?
Many hunters choose to use a choke with their turkey guns to keep the pattern of the shot tight. Most choke tube companies have “turkey” choke tubes are designed for turkey hunting. Learn more about finding the right choke for your gun.
What color are turkeys?
Adult male turkeys are typically larger in size and more colorful than their female counterparts, with colors of red, white and blue being noticeable on their head and neck.
What is the best mix for turkey food plots?
A mixture of corn, cereal grains, and green field is the ideal mix for turkey food plots.
What is the best green field for turkeys?
Green fields of any type attract turkeys. Alfalfa and clover are prime green field candidates. Many varieties of clover are available to fit your climate, soil type and drainage. Both clover and alfalfa green up early in spring. Chufa is wild turkey gold in the South.
How to make a turkey escape cover?
A good way to create some escape cover that turkeys will love is to clear-cut a section of timber; one to five acres is plenty, with a couple of the smaller-sized plots being ideal. Clear-cuts allow sunlight to reach the ground and brush to grow thick. Yes, it can be difficult to watch some big trees go. But the wildlife habitat you create will far outweigh your reservations.
What trees do turkeys like to roost on?
But if you have mature trees, preserve them. Big, old, spreading, multibranched trees are wild turkeys' primary choice for roosting. In the Midwest and East, oaks are preferred.
Do turkeys roost on land?
Preserving natural feeding areas and planting food plots, fields or other openings with forage that turkeys prefer can do more to benefit the turkey hunting on your farm than any other factor. If you don’t have turkeys roosting on your land , you can still attract them to your acreage every morning and afternoon with excellent feed.
Can you manage a turkey farm?
If you manage hunting property, whether it’s a 50-acre family farm or a multiple-member lease, wild turkeys likely figure into your plans – at least to an extent. Deer get the most attention, and food plots and improvements intended for deer certainly benefit turkeys. But by specifically managing for turkeys and focusing on a few key habitat requirements, you can turn your farm into a veritable gobbler nirvana.
Do turkeys like brush?
Open hardwoods are classic turkey habitat. But turkeys also require areas of dense brush and vegetation. Like any gallinaceous game bird, turkeys prefer to retreat to cover when threatened. Whether it’s a field of tall grass or thickets of shrubs and vines, turkeys need escape areas.
