We had a really nice Thanksgiving at the Yardstead. We killed and prepared one of the turkeys we have been raising and it was delicious. We have been rasing turkeys since May. We purchased the poults (baby turkeys) at three days old from our local feed store. We chose a hen for Thanksgiving and she weighed 20lbs live. After being dressed out the turkey weighed 15lbs. We killed and dressed the turkey on Thursday morning. It took about an hour to have the turkey ready for cooking. We cooked the turkey in a deep fryer and it turned out great. We have another turkey we plan to cook for Christmas.
I think we will definitely plan on getting more poults next year. We only got three poults this year, since we had never raised turkeys before, but we may get a few more next year. Overall the raising of the turkeys was fairly simple. They were raised in our chicken pen along side the chickens and were fed with the chickens also. They did well on the chicken feed and grew fast.