Working as a farm manager for Perdue from 1996 to 2001 can teach you a lot about turkeys. The farm was on CR 450S and while some things have changed, many have stayed the same, such as a turkey’s early life.

That life begins at a hatchery, where their sex is determined soon after hatching. Then they are sorted and quickly put in trays to be delivered to a waiting turkey farm. The truck is heated to keep the close to 12,000 poults (the name for a baby turkey) warm. They are delivered to a brooder at their designated farm. The temperature in the brooder is very warm, 95 degrees and even warmer in the area around the brooder stoves. A ring of cardboard or masonite is used to create a pen to put the poults in and as the truck delivers them they are quickly moved into the pens. They are placed on a bed of wood shavings, half at each end of the building. They have feeders and waterers already full in the pens.

The young poults begin eating and drinking immediately and gather around the brooder stove, which is suspended about 18 inches above the pen. It has an automatic thermostat on it that will kick the heater on as the temperature drops. The idea is to keep it as warm as it would be if the poults were in the wild and under their mother’s wing.

The Goldilocks’ principle applies here for it can’t be too hot nor too cold but just right. Too hot dehydrates the birds. Too cold and they will pile on each other and smother the ones underneath to death. A cold wind across the brooder is the bane of a turkey producer for it creates drafts and will cause birds to pile. The manager of the farm will go through the birds when they are a few days old and use a broom to gently keep them from piling and he or she will be constantly checking the temperature with a heat gauge gun. Temperature isn’t the only thing that can cause turkeys to pile. A loud noise will also set the birds off and cause a pile that could smother a number of birds.

Twice a day, the bird feeders are refilled by hand and the waterers are checked and cleaned. Dead birds are disposed of in a compost bin outside. If one can keep the percentage below 10 percent, this is a good death rate for the life of a flock.

After five days, the rings are taken down and the birds are allowed to mix together. They are then allowed to eat from the automatic feed lines. Remember this is in both halves of the 500 foot by 40 foot building.

While these birds are growing the older birds in the other buildings (the grow-outs) have been taken to the processing plant. The manager of the farm then cleans those buildings with a pressure washer and disinfects the equipment and feedlines. He will decake the litter (take the top layer off the manure) and then till the barns to create a dry bed for the birds to live on. The decaked litter is some of the best manure for gardens. Eventually the grow outs are ready for the younger birds. At around six to eight weeks, the flocks are moved into each grow out, 6,000 or so in each.

The biggest worry in a grow out is to keep constant feed and water to the birds, avoiding feed spills from the automatic feed line pans getting knocked down, or a water spill from a leaking waterer. In the summer fans are run through the building. Tunnel ventilation is used in the summer to help keep the birds cooler than the outside air, or, if tunnel ventilation is not used, fans are suspended down through the 500-foot building to keep air circulating.

In the winter, the challenge is trying to keep the building warm. As the birds grow they generate their own heat, but supplemental gas heaters help keep the temperature where it needs to be.

There is also a worry about suffocation. An automatic curtain drop machine will drop one fourth of the building’s curtains to allow ventilation in case of oxygen deprivation are also on the brooder. There are vents throughout the building to allow some air into the mix and the curtains can be raised or lowered to try and control the temperature. This is a delicate balancing act as the birds grow and take up more space. One would use the nonprevailing wind side of the building to adjust the curtains up or down to avoid creating a draft over the birds, especially in the winter.

After the birds are 19-weeks-old, they are scheduled for processing. The operation is done at night to avoid the heat of the day and to have the birds ready with the first shift at the processing plant in Washington. A chute pen is created at one end of the grow out and the loading crew arrives with a truck and a machine that will create an escalator for the birds to be raised to the level of the pens on the loading trucks. The pens are stacked five high. Two men stand at the end of the escalator and as the birds are driven up to the machine and go up it they load them into the pens.

The farm manager helps with the moving of the birds inside the building and checks for problems outside the building as occasionally a bird will get away and the manager has to catch it and get it loaded. The birds will not move far in the dark.

The manager hires a group of workers to move the birds up to the loading area. Perdue has a crew there to get the birds up to the machine and loaded. Their crew takes turns throwing the birds onto the truck.

Through the life of the flock, a flock manager visits the farm and checks the birds for disease and overall health. Medicine is prescribed and other supplements. This is usually delivered through the watering system. The flock manager and the farm manager work together to maximize the weight of the birds. Birds at 19 weeks average around 40 pounds for Toms, while hens would naturally weigh less. Sometimes birds are taken earlier to meet certain demands for smaller birds in the market place. Birds sold for Thanksgiving dinners are processed at an earlier age at a lesser weight.

My experience as a turkey producer was with Perdue. Raising turkeys for a living is a 24/7 worry. There are a multitude of ways that turkeys will find to die prematurely. One critical piece of equipment for a turkey farm is a back-up generator in case the electricity goes off. Another crisis I experienced is the water pump going out. We had two incidents in five years of heat kills when temperatures got over 100 degrees outside.

Lots of people work very hard to get the Thanksgiving turkey on the dinner table, as well as the turkey sandwiches and other selections of turkey meat delivered to restaurants and grocery stores.