Central
Florida Pet Turkeys
Welcome to Pet Turkeys!
This site is committed to sharing information & recommendations about the care and nurturing of pet turkeys.
If you wish to acquire or have acquired some of our Free Heritage Turkeys: Please contact us at the email address Clovis636@aol.com
As always, please review the information on why Not to have pet turkeys.
The information provided at this site has been gleaned from personal observations of domesticated turkey behavior, breeding, nesting, incubation and coop design. Consider this an unscientific reference guide of tips and theories to help anyone with the challenge and joy of rearing back yard turkeys.
My Facebook page Pet Turkeys You can always check in and say hello!
Site Map (Index of frivolous pages....)
My granddaughter Lilly hugging Butterball and the flock of jealous onlookers....
Newly hatched Poult. Welcome to the World little one!
We offer our birds and place rescue birds to pet homes at no charge.
(repeat pet homes only)
Bobbles the turkey who loved to dance
Back yard companions
Angry Turkey Tom and Hen protesting against Thanksgiving on my YouTube page
Do you need the perfect gift?
For pet lovers around the globe, "It's a Matter of Luck" is a collection of heart warming stories of horse rescues from the slaughterhouse.
Available on Amazon:
It's a Matter of Luck: Inspirational, Heartfelt Stories of Horses Given a Second Chance.
by Kim Ryba & Lina T. Lindgren
Warning: This book may cause your eyes to water -in a good way. (speaking from experience after reading it)
Please give Kim and Lina a heartfelt review on Amazon!
Author Bruce Ryba at Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B & Artemis 1. "We are going to the Moon!"
Author's discussion (that's me) on You Tube of a book review on Amazon
My Facebook page Pet Turkeys You can always check in and say hello!
For the video versions of information, please check out my YouTube Channel (Turkeys, KSC, Flintknapping, dive stories etc.)
Book One of Florida History:
Freedoms Quest Struggle for the Northern Frontier and lost tales of old Florida
Fiction & language warning.
Available on Amazon
Desperate times call for bold action.
In a desperate move to retain Florida and protect the treasure-laden galleons on their dangerous return journey to Europe, the King of Spain issues a royal decree offering refuge to all English slaves who escape Florida and pick up a musket to defend the coquina walls of Saint Augustine.
In another bold gamble, the King offers refuge to the dissatisfied Indian nations of the southeast who will take up arms against the English.
Clans, traumatized by war and disease, cross the Spanish Frontier to settle the cattle-rich land and burned missions of Florida.
Follow the descendants of the conquistador Louis Castillo in remote Spanish Florida, a wildland swept by diseases, hurricanes, and northern invasions.
Book Two: Available on Amazon
Why this website?
--Lack of information on the Internet!
(So that statement is really no longer correct & should be amended as times have changed since I began searching the net)
BackYard Chicken and some of the Facebook turkey groups have amazingly good information-especially on the subject of diseases.
Still..... many of the other pages I have read on the internet are weak in information and sometimes just wrong (The google 'answer page' on turkeys is still repeating the nonsense about turkeys drowning in the rain)
And other internet pages offer quality scientific data produced by colleges and companies that focus on raising and butchering turkeys in three months. (not the information I needed)
Only recently I found a good source of information about raising turkeys but within two paragraphs (to my horror) the author was describing the process of burning the beaks off of baby turkeys!
(The reason for the beak and toe mutilation is overcrowding at some (or most) farms or facilities)
If your obligation is to burn the beaks off of these little cuties -please leave.
Like us, many people have searched the Internet in frustrating attempts to answer questions about pet turkeys. To our disappointment, most internet search results were subjects such as “Jerked Turkey and rice” “How to deep fry a Turkey” “Turkey farming 15,000 birds” and of course “Turkey Hunting” and “Turkey Calls.”
Mini disclaimer: I’m not a hypocrite; I like jerked turkey & understand the requirement for the massive factory type turkey farms. And was at one time an avid turkey hunter.
However over and over, people ask me or email the same questions about space, feed, interaction and so I created this site to help the backyard hobbyist who currently owns or wish to acquire a small number of friendly turkeys.
Hopefully our information and stories can go a little way to help people successfully raise pet turkeys while spreading the word about the endearing, even surprising and remarkable qualities of these curious birds.
Newly hatched poults:
I'm getting ready to move hen and new family, from the outside nest of her choosing to a secure pen & dry inside pen
Turkeys see in color and much of their communication is non verbal coloring
(think blushing in people)
Video clip of turkeys pecking the camera
Video Clip of a turkey hen calling out an alarm when she saw a strange house cat
Our Location:
Brevard County Florida, a few miles southwest of Kennedy Space Center.
We maintain a “not for profit” hobby turkey flock and limited bird rescue. We are not a hatchery. We do not sell or kill our birds; we are not a business -even though it’s true that our “Free Range” Organic turkeys that we give away could be sold for surprising amounts of money during the holiday feasts.
We simply enjoy the amazing turkey & enjoy their interaction with us or Florida’s nature. The turkey yelp, the cluck, the gobble and whine all have a place in our hearts!
Our back yard flock of Free Range Heritage turkeys provides us with hours of entertainment, affection & companionship, manure (fertilizer) for our organic gardens, limited eggs for cooking and feathers for arrow fletching.
In return we provide our birds plenty of food, a safe home, large maple and oak trees to roost at night and generous open free range space to graze. Finally we provide a “no kill zone” (we do not eat our pets)
Free Heritage Turkeys to pet homes! The consequences of a healthy and happy flock and the long Florida hatching season are …babies, lots of babies….. For the past fifteen+ years we have raised and given away nearly 200 birds each season as well as hundreds of fertile eggs
YES we gave away the birds away at no charge, to pet homes only; furthermore we have also placed many rescued turkeys and chickens to new homes. We have limited space for rescue birds, but we help when we can.
Butterball and newly hatched poult
Winter storm and a warm towel!
Finally: perhaps you may enjoy a few of our personal stories of interactions with our back yard turkey pets. If you take nothing from this site, please read the heartwarming story of “Bobbles” "The turkey who loved to dance”.
Bobbles story is a tale of the unexpected rewards and humbling experience of raising a handicapped turkey.
And let me repeat again: Please review "Reasons not to have turkeys" before obtaining some of these backyard companions.
Also keep in mind in most of North America and the United Kingdom; there is NO such thing as a "Pet" Turkey. Turkeys and Chickens are food animals with no rights. So the very fact that I use the term Pet Turkey might make me politically incorrect & perhaps expelled from the European Union or Ohio.
Expect to find these concepts in places around the globe:
From the UK BSAVA :
"Over the past decade, small-scale poultry keeping has increased dramatically. Many of these new keepers view their poultry as pets rather than farmyard animals. However, irrespective of the purpose for which poultry are kept, they are technically ‘farm animals’ and ‘food-producing animals’. Unlike in horses, there is no current provision allowing for poultry to be classed as non-food producing animals." (UK Back Yard Poultry)
For those who need to know about NPIP certification: My NPIP page (Opine & Whine page)
Contact us: Clovis636@aol.com
