If you have chickens and are considering adding turkeys to your homestead, you have no doubt either read or been told by a well-meaning friend that you cannot keep chickens and turkeys together. It is widely believed that chickens will give blackhead disease to turkeys and wipe out your flock. This is not usually true in natural situations, and there are several things you can do to guard against the disease.
First, chickens cannot give blackhead to your turkeys if they don’t have it. Maintaining a closed flock and only purchasing day-old chicks and poults from certified disease-free hatcheries reduces your risk. Because chickens can be carriers and show no symptoms of the disease, do not accept any rescue chickens, unwanted roosters from someone else’s flock, or any free adult chickens for any other reason. Wait three years before getting any type of poultry if you are concerned about blackhead from previous poultry that lived on your property.
Why wait three years to raise poultry if you are concerned about the blackhead history of your property? The disease can be transmitted through cecal worm eggs, which can be ingested by turkeys. Earthworms, which are eaten by turkeys, eat the cecal worm eggs and become carriers. The protozoa inside an earthworm are protected as the worm travels through the turkey’s acidic stomach to the cecum, where it can infect the bird. Chickens raised on infected property can perpetuate the disease quietly. By not raising any poultry on the property for three years, you break the lifecycle of the protozoa.
Blackhead first became a problem at the end of the nineteenth century. U.S. turkey production fell from 11 million birds in 1890 to an average of 3.7 million annually between 1910 and 1920. I doubt it is a coincidence that this happened at the same time that poultry producers were moving birds inside and creating larger and larger flocks. Blackhead infection is unlikely in free-range situations because the H. meleagridis pathogen is not strong enough to survive the drying effect of wind, ultraviolet rays of sunshine, and freezing temperatures.
In the early 1900s, poultry producers thought that turkeys contracted the disease by consuming feces of infected birds. Today, however, researchers have discovered that a turkey’s stomach acid kills the blackhead protozoan.
The most likely route of infection is fecal-cloacal, meaning that a turkey will get infected if it sits in infected feces, which is most likely to happen in a confinement situation where turkeys are crowded and roosts are not provided.
People used to believe that turkeys would be healthier if raised inside with wire flooring, and those turkeys probably were healthier than their cousins that were confined on solid floors. The wire floors almost entirely eliminated fecal contact. However, it is difficult for turkeys to contract blackhead if they are free range and can roost in trees or if they have roosts available to them in their overnight shelter.
This is an excerpt from Homegrown and Handmade: A Practical Guide to More Self-Reliant Living by Deborah Niemann
For more information
A Beginner’s Guide to Chickens
Raising Turkeys
5 Tips for Turkeys in Cold Weather
Thank you for the information on blackhead in turkeys and that i can put my chickens and turkeys togeather.
I want to add turkeys to my flock this coming spring. Thanks.
We have raised turkeys and chickens together for the last several years with no issues…..we have roosts for them to sit on at night in the secure yard and during the day, they wander an eighth of an acre that we have fenced to protect them from the coyotes that range around here. Our fenced, free range area is covered with wild rose bushes and other vegetation that gives them shade in summer and cover in case of hawks, owls and such…..haven’t lost a bird to a predator in 8 years (knock on wood!) The foliage attracts lots of bugs – so they eat pretty well when the weather is good!
I too have had chickens and turkeys together for many years without issue. The only problem I have with their co-habitation is in spring when the turkey tom gets too amorous and attempts to mount my chicken hens. He smushes them and kills them. I separate them in the spring to prevent that. Thanks for the article! I didn’t realize that was how the blackhead was transmitted.
thanks for the info. I was told not to. they are young turkeys yet will keep them in as long as possible gradually let them out hope it works My first try Melba
Your posts makes a lot of sense. I have some 8 week old turkey. Some seem to have black head and others don’t. Because the sick ones are laying on the ground instead of using their roosts! Thanks for the information!
I have a tom red bourbon and a hen narrangensset they free range and live with 18 Banty Rosster & Hens mixed. The turkeys rooster outdoors enclosed open area 10×30 area safe from Fox, & Coyotes, the chickens ducks geese all have a large coop split off into separate areas. I have had no blackhead except for 2 points I got from a farmers market coop days. They past at 7 wks old.
Thank you for sharing your story!