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Revelations of Re-evaluation: Turkeys

1/28/2013

4 Comments

 
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.
Picture
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.
4 Comments
Bruce king link
1/29/2013 05:09:48 pm

I wasn't sure what your reasoning was about linking turkeys to a basket; could you explain that a little?

With respect to labor, economies of scale do apply here; one reason that turkeys are so cheap is that raised in flocks of 20,000 per barn, the amount of labor is pretty minimal. Hand-raised on pasture is a little different proposition.

Is there a profit level that you would consider adequate to raise them? Heritage turkeys sell for between $6 and $12 a pound. At $12/lb, $144/bird, would that have provided enough margin to compensate for the work?

I don't know that selling potatoes in small quantities would be any less work to find customers.

Bringing in extra hands on slaughter or harvest day is a time-honored tradition; more hands make the work easier. This year for turkeys was probably the hardest for you; the next would be easier, I think. Not trying to talk you out of your decision; just noting that part of your frustration is a normal reaction to the learning curve.

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Jeff
1/31/2013 12:37:35 am

The idea behind the baskets: Grow high profit vegetables with a minimum amount of time and money put into marketing. I also wanted to do something different than the hordes of people trying to sell at farmers markets. My intuition is to try and do things that others haven't done before to set myself apart from the pack. Sometimes that approach will work, and sometimes it won't.

$12/lb would have just about covered my margin, but I'd have been a bit under my goal of $15/hour. I figure it costs about $58 to go from poult to finished and processed turkey. I also figure it takes me about 500 hours of labor per 100 birds. That means I need to charge $13.30/lb. I don't think there are too many people out there that want to pay those kind of prices.

I have some ideas for efficient marketing of vegetables in small quantities...but I'll save those to another post.

I agree that next year would in some ways be easier for turkeys, but if I'm going to engage in agricultural business that doesn't have much profit potential, I want to make sure I at least feel like I'm doing something that I feel good about.

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Bruce King link
1/31/2013 03:00:50 pm

There are crops and animals that I like, and ones that I don't, and some that I can tolerate because they aren't much trouble, but I'm not attached to them at all.

So pigs I like, sheep I don't, and chickens I'm not attached to at all. Turkeys fall somewhere between sheep and chickens. I like them because the customer contact is intense, but short; I tell folks that I don't take orders until Oct 1st, and I usually sell out by the 3rd week. For most of the growout you don't talk to customers about the birds; and thanksgiving is a ready-made harvest time, with a followup in christmas for any birds that are left over.
With the processing times you experienced it looks like it took one man hour per bird to process; with some work I think you could get that down to 20 minutes a bird, or 3 per hour, which would lessen the crunch you experienced.

But that's all immaterial if you're saying that turkeys aren't your favorite. I completely understand that. I think i'll probably sell most of my sheep this year on the same basis.

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Cathy
2/2/2013 12:37:27 am

I can't imagine growing so many turkeys and processing them myself. But I hate to see you give them up entirely.

I have had turkeys for a few years. The first ones I raised were part of a homesteader package so they were raised with a mix of chickens and waterfowl. They dutifully went into the coop each night until one spent a cold rainy night on the workshop roof. I trimmed one wing and eventually he got too big for flying that high anyway. I presently have a flock that varies from 5 to 20. Some go in at night and some sit on the coral gate. I knock them off and then they go in. I sell a lot of Red Bourbon turkey poults and a few adults. We eat a lot of turkey and really enjoy having them. When the poop load gets too great in the coop then some have to go.

I feed them all they can eat in 15 minutes once a day and they are very fat at processing. The hens are small enough to get in the chicken coops and steal layer feed but the big Toms can't do that. I limit the chicken coops to layer feed put in the coops in the evening and it runs out by mid morning. They eat some of the cow hay. It looks like they prefer grass to alfalfa. Otherwise they just free range.

Besides a couple for the holidays I raised twenty fall hatch poults in the garden this year after the growing season was over. They hung out with a couple of hens and I walked them to the coop at night. It was really easy. I have sold some and am about to start eating some of those left.

My hens will hatch poults but the hens get killed if they aren't enclosed and the poults only occasionally get away and take up with a different hen. The hens won't voluntarily return to the coop for about 6 weeks.

I like the outdoor roosts that some use and have thought of raising more in electric netting with a moveable shed that encloses a roost on three sides. I fear I will have the same problems you describe. I could have 30 Red Bourbon poults in three 10 day apart batch hatches and and another 20 from crossbred hens. I had more hens last year. I just hope to sell lots of poults again this year.

But processing 100 turkeys is more than I can fathom. I have borrowed a spin tub style chicken plucker (of the leading brand) but it simply did a poor job on turkeys. I'm probably going to by a dry wheel type plucker this year. If I ever get the processing down I will try doing a small batch to sell. But I would consider doing some as frozen birds so the effort can be spread out.

Prairie Heritage Farm (they are on the web) has done well with turkeys in Montana with lower prices than you can get in Bruces's area. You might check them out.

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