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Things You'll Need
Instructions
Fattening Your Turkey
Buy Turkey feed at a farm supply store. Avoid anything with antibiotics and animal byproducts unless doing so under proper recommendation. Also avoid purchasing anything with a growth agent in it if your turkeys are already bred to be large, since this could badly harm your turkeys. For a natural approach, focus on multi-grains and poultry scratch, which is oats, cracked corn and wheat with grit.
Regulate the turkeys' amount and type of feed over time. As a guideline, you can follow a table like the one provided by Homestead Organics to feed turkeys the recommended amount throughout the roughly 6 months of preparation (roughly 4 months for females). This table suggests a 28% Turkey Starter feed for the first 8 weeks. During weeks 10 to 15, you can switch to Turkey Grower feed due to the changing protein requirements. By keeping careful track of your turkeys' weights over time, you can adjust the recommended amount of feed higher or lower as necessary. It's also a good idea to give them small hard objects, like granite grit, to help them digest their food. If you have wild turkeys, they may prefer insects instead, and you can hand feed them crickets or mealworms from pet stores as an alternative to feed if they won't take it.
Confine the turkey to a small area. You can do this with chicken coop wire to define the area they can move around in. However, it's important not to confine the turkeys too much, as this will reduce their appetites. The goal is to provide turkeys with an area that allows them to walk around but prevents them from running vigorously, because a turkey that exercises too much will burn too many calories.
Feed them kitchen scraps when you̵7;re readying them for the table. This is especially useful during the last week or so of your timetable. You should feed them 7% fat for their meals and not much more than this, so it's important to give them fatty foods, like fatty meat, only in proportion to their regular feed.