I'm starting to get into the full swing of planning for 2013, and I'm ready to unveil the first big change: we won't be raising turkeys. Why? See below.
I had already been waffling over raising turkeys in 2013 in the weeks before the above picture was taken in late October. The realization that coyotes had figured out how to beat the electric netting and were picking off turkeys was just the straw that broke the (farmer's) back.
Our decision to raise turkeys in 2012 was based on a bunch of ideas and assumptions, some of which hindsight has colored a dark shade of fail: we thought that turkeys made sense because customers would be willing to pay a premium price for the holiday market, that we could bundle them with Thanksgiving vegetables to make a more marketable product, that they would be faster and easier to slaughter and process than chickens on a per pound basis, and that by raising heritage birds we would be raising animals that would excel on pasture. We were right on some of those ideas, but oh so wrong on others. It turns out that turkeys are just plain dumb, and while plenty of livestock aren't particularly smart, turkeys seem to actually have an instinctual desire to end their own lives. I first noticed this when I came into the brooder one morning to find a turkey trapped in between the wire mesh that separated the upper section of the stall. The bird had managed to fly up three feet to a narrow ledge, push its way through a tiny opening in the mesh, and walk forward for two feet--thoroughly trapped. I was able to push the bird backwards out through the hole, but it was an early lesson that turkeys were going to be a lot of trouble. This weird (lack of) instinct also reared its ugly head when the birds were on pasture. For example, in the first few weeks of the electro-net fencing pasture phase, one or two birds would invariably fly out of the paddock each day. One would expect one of two things: the escapees would either range farther away and seek shelter at night in the nearby trees, or fly back into the paddock. Unfortunately, neither of those occurred. Instead, the turkeys would be faithfully nested on the ground just outside the paddock. I quickly learned I had to go out to the paddocks each evening to get them back in. If I hadn't, they would have stayed ground nested all night, just waiting for a coyote to come and eat them.
I started to realize that to keep these birds alive and give them access to fresh pasture, I would need to come up with a more elaborate (and expensive) pen system, or go on a coyote killing spree. In the end, I think it makes sense to work with animals that are naturally much easier to pasture. Chickens, for instance, will happily allow themselves to be locked up in a coop each night. Cows and pigs are large enough to be protect themselves from most predators.
The work involved in processing only cemented my resolve. I wrote about it in more detail here. In summary: I really didn't enjoy the work. On top of that, there is also a finite limit to the number of turkeys that I can process for Thanksgiving. The WSDA poultry permit requires that turkeys be slaughtered no longer than 48 hours before purchase, that they be sold non-frozen, and that customers need to come to the farm to pick them up. My three-person crew could process between 3 and 5 turkeys/hour once we got over our learning curve. If we worked 16 hour days with no breaks and time for cleanup, we might be able to process 80 turkeys a day. 50/day is a more realistic upper bound. While it's possible that customers might be willing to pick up their turkeys on other days than the weekend before Thanksgiving, I feel fairly confident that turkey pickup is best scheduled for the Saturday and Sunday before Thanksgiving. If I hire someone to meet customers on Saturday and don't process on Sunday, I might be able to process 50 birds on Thursday, 50 on Friday, and 50 on Saturday. If I'm generous and say that I can make $30/bird, that's only $4500 of profit for three days of absolute hell and stress, plus another seven months of caring for the birds every day, plus the time and effort of finding 150 customers. No thanks.
(Note, I could probably hire a few more people and increase the maximum number of birds that could be processed each day)
I hope that I've given a thorough explanation of why we won't be raising turkeys next year. So, what will I do instead of turkeys? Well, more to come on that, but in general, I'm moving toward a two tract philosophy: 1. High volume, low risk, low revenue/unit (eg. vegetables) and 2. Low volume, moderate risk, high revenue/unit (eg. cattle). The two tracts require two different marketing approaches....but more to come on that as well.
Our decision to raise turkeys in 2012 was based on a bunch of ideas and assumptions, some of which hindsight has colored a dark shade of fail: we thought that turkeys made sense because customers would be willing to pay a premium price for the holiday market, that we could bundle them with Thanksgiving vegetables to make a more marketable product, that they would be faster and easier to slaughter and process than chickens on a per pound basis, and that by raising heritage birds we would be raising animals that would excel on pasture. We were right on some of those ideas, but oh so wrong on others. It turns out that turkeys are just plain dumb, and while plenty of livestock aren't particularly smart, turkeys seem to actually have an instinctual desire to end their own lives. I first noticed this when I came into the brooder one morning to find a turkey trapped in between the wire mesh that separated the upper section of the stall. The bird had managed to fly up three feet to a narrow ledge, push its way through a tiny opening in the mesh, and walk forward for two feet--thoroughly trapped. I was able to push the bird backwards out through the hole, but it was an early lesson that turkeys were going to be a lot of trouble. This weird (lack of) instinct also reared its ugly head when the birds were on pasture. For example, in the first few weeks of the electro-net fencing pasture phase, one or two birds would invariably fly out of the paddock each day. One would expect one of two things: the escapees would either range farther away and seek shelter at night in the nearby trees, or fly back into the paddock. Unfortunately, neither of those occurred. Instead, the turkeys would be faithfully nested on the ground just outside the paddock. I quickly learned I had to go out to the paddocks each evening to get them back in. If I hadn't, they would have stayed ground nested all night, just waiting for a coyote to come and eat them.
I started to realize that to keep these birds alive and give them access to fresh pasture, I would need to come up with a more elaborate (and expensive) pen system, or go on a coyote killing spree. In the end, I think it makes sense to work with animals that are naturally much easier to pasture. Chickens, for instance, will happily allow themselves to be locked up in a coop each night. Cows and pigs are large enough to be protect themselves from most predators.
The work involved in processing only cemented my resolve. I wrote about it in more detail here. In summary: I really didn't enjoy the work. On top of that, there is also a finite limit to the number of turkeys that I can process for Thanksgiving. The WSDA poultry permit requires that turkeys be slaughtered no longer than 48 hours before purchase, that they be sold non-frozen, and that customers need to come to the farm to pick them up. My three-person crew could process between 3 and 5 turkeys/hour once we got over our learning curve. If we worked 16 hour days with no breaks and time for cleanup, we might be able to process 80 turkeys a day. 50/day is a more realistic upper bound. While it's possible that customers might be willing to pick up their turkeys on other days than the weekend before Thanksgiving, I feel fairly confident that turkey pickup is best scheduled for the Saturday and Sunday before Thanksgiving. If I hire someone to meet customers on Saturday and don't process on Sunday, I might be able to process 50 birds on Thursday, 50 on Friday, and 50 on Saturday. If I'm generous and say that I can make $30/bird, that's only $4500 of profit for three days of absolute hell and stress, plus another seven months of caring for the birds every day, plus the time and effort of finding 150 customers. No thanks.
(Note, I could probably hire a few more people and increase the maximum number of birds that could be processed each day)
I hope that I've given a thorough explanation of why we won't be raising turkeys next year. So, what will I do instead of turkeys? Well, more to come on that, but in general, I'm moving toward a two tract philosophy: 1. High volume, low risk, low revenue/unit (eg. vegetables) and 2. Low volume, moderate risk, high revenue/unit (eg. cattle). The two tracts require two different marketing approaches....but more to come on that as well.
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