by Victoria Redhed Miller
We live in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains in northwest Washington state. At our elevation of about 1000 feet, we typically get a fair amount of snow between November and February. An average winter would include a lot of nights with temperatures in the 20s, some nights in the teens and often a week or so in single digits in December. We have been raising free-range chickens here since 2007, and turkeys and ducks since 2008.
We are also off the grid, so we don’t use things like heat lamps in the coops. In fact, none of our coops are heated or insulated. So how do we keep our birds warm and comfortable during freezing weather?
With chickens, usually a main concern is frostbitten combs. I wondered myself, with their bare heads and large wattles, about how our Midget White turkeys would manage when we had days with the temperature staying below freezing. At the time I could not find anything in books or blogs about this, so we just had to learn from experience. Turns out, the turkeys were just fine. We didn’t do anything special to help prevent frostbite. However, there are a few tips I can give you that have proven consistently useful.
First, turkeys, when given the choice, will opt to spend the night roosting outdoors, usually in a tree. Unlike our chickens, they don’t seem to mind being out in the rain or snow; the toms especially seem disinclined to get out of the weather. The first couple of years we had turkeys, we were chasing them out of the trees every night. At this point, almost all the turkeys we have were hatched on our farm, by broody hens, so they learned from their mamas to go into a coop to roost at night. This not only keeps them out of the bad weather, it also helps minimize predator problems.
The important thing about turkeys roosting in a coop is to make sure the roosts are big enough. Even smallish turkeys like the Midget White have large feet. Like chickens, when turkeys roost, they settle down on their feet and their feathers keep their feet warm. It’s critical to use a roost large enough so their toes can’t go all the way around it; otherwise the tips of their toes won’t be covered by the feathers, so they are vulnerable to frostbite.
What’s worked well for us is to use cedar 2x4s for roosts. If you have another kind of heritage turkey (most of which are larger than the Midget White) you may need to try something even larger. We turn the 2x4s so the wide side is turned up. This seems to be just fine for all ages of turkeys. Our turkey roosts are about 6 feet long; depending on the size of your turkeys, if you use roosts longer than this, they may need extra support in the middle.
Another thing we do in cold weather is to bump up the birds’ carbohydrate intake. The easiest way we’ve found to do this is to feed out some cracked corn an hour or two before they go into their coops for the night. This gives them a carbo boost to help regulate their body heat during the long cold winter night.
One other bit of advice I’d like to share: In the winter it’s even more important to keep up with cleaning out your coops regularly. The birds are spending more time in those coops than they do outdoors when the days are short, and most of their poop is in there with them. Birds are quite vulnerable to respiratory problems, so please keep those coops clean and dry.
This is also a good time to make sure that there is adequate ventilation in your coops. It’s easy to think that your birds will be warmer and more comfortable if you close up the windows, but air circulation is critical. I promise, it won’t hurt your birds.
To sum up: Select cold-hardy breeds if you live where winters are cold. Make sure your roosts are large and sturdy enough for your turkeys. Help keep them warm at night with extra carbohydrate before you tuck them in. Keep those coops clean, dry, and well-ventilated. Your turkeys – and other poultry — will be happier and healthier.
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Victoria Redhed Miller is the author of Pure Poultry: Living Well with Heritage Chickens, Turkeys and Ducks
and Craft Distilling: Making Liquor Legally at Home
.
Check out some of my tips for brooding and raising turkeys.
I do not raise Turkeys, but we have about 20 wild turkeys that have been nestling in our huge Pine tree over by our Bird feeder. I feel so bad for them because it has been about 10-15 and even 20 below zero with gusting winds of 40+ miles an hour. How can we help them?
If you sprinkle some cracked corn, oats, or sunflower seeds on the snow under their tree, they’d probably appreciate that a lot!
I began raising hens a little under a year ago and I’m having so much fun with every aspect of their lives. I only have six, so they are quite easily managed.
Along the way I read about heritage breed turkeys, Midget White turkeys in particular caught my attention, and that their numbers are at a critical status. I’m curious to know if they are capable of living wild once raised. I have this question particularly for the offspring of the turkeys I would raise initially. I’m vegetarian so would not be raising them for meat, but my desire is to bolster their numbers in the wild. Would this be feasible?
You almost never see white animals in the wild because they are a blinking beacon for predators. They have no camouflage to protect them. White poultry was created to have a cleaner-looking carcass for eating — with the assumption that they would always be living in captivity and protected from predators. Midget Whites were bred for the meat industry and have never lived in the wild.
Are there any particular breeds of turkey that stand out to you as being more “cold hardy” than others?
While also being natural breeders….
thx in advance
All of the heritage breeds do fine in cold temps. Only heritage turkeys can breed naturally, so don’t get anything that says broad breasted or double breasted or giant in the name.
I have a heritage bronze hen and white tom .v they were fine together then one day the hen puffed up and wad aggressive to the tom. we had to separate her beek from his head. both are 7 months old. she laid her first egg v today. she is being kept seperate from him. what can I do
If you had not said that she laid an egg, I was going to suggest that she was a male because that’s the age when they start to get aggressive with each other. I have had toms that probably would have ended with one dead had I not separated them, but I have never had an aggressive turkey hen. I would put them back together and see what happens. They might need to be next to each other and share a fenceline for a couple of days before putting them back together, but they should get along fine if it’s a male and female.
Live in PA, cold winters. I have chickens, guineas & turkeys. Chickens & guineas in coop at night. Turkeys are in a run side of coop with tarps around. Not sealed up completely, some wind gets through. Question, 2 hens1 tom…they really don’t want to go in coop really too small with 10 chickens, 8 guineas, & 3 turkeys. I have straw in run. Temps get low here, How cold out before I need to push them in coop? I do have a drop board & they all 3 roost on it. Rest of birds are higher on roost. Thanks.
I live in Illinois, and we have had temperatures as low as 25 below zero, and our turkeys did fine roosting outside. They would usually roost in trees or on fences, so we gave up on trying to force them into the coop more than a decade ago.
I have only one male domestic turkey. I live in maine. According to everything stated in this passage, do you think he’ll be able to survive the winter? I do have a heating lamp, but all the snow on the ground won’t bother him? And he isn’t part of a flock
I’m not sure why you think he won’t be okay after reading this article. He does NOT need a heat lamp. They can even roost in the trees. Snow is not a problem for turkeys. Their feathers keep them quite warm. If you have ever owned a down comforter or jacket, you have personally experienced the amazing insulating properties of feathers.
I don’t know why my turkey started to molt in December. She’s a rescue giant white. She’s growing the feathers back but the timing is ridiculous. I try to pack her pen with lots of straw. Tonight it’s in the teens. I’m so worried about her.