← Turkeys and guinea fowl H22-03 · Module 3 of 7 · Pages: 20 · Worksheets: 5

Feeding and grazing

How much and what to feed poults, growing turkeys, breeding birds and guinea fowl, how to use pasture and home-grown grain, and how to avoid dangerous feeds

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Feeding and grazing

In short

  • Poults and keets need 26–28 % protein for the first 4–6 weeks: turkey or game-bird starter, not chick starter.
  • Salinomycin and narasin (coccidiostats in some broiler feeds) are poisonous to turkeys. Read the label.
  • Lower the protein step by step: about 20 % from week 8, 15–16 % from week 16 to slaughter.
  • Grazing from week 8 can replace roughly a fifth of the ration, but only young grass and clovers, not old tough grass.
  • Guinea fowl need only 30–50 g of grain a day in summer alongside ranging, 70–100 g in winter.
  • No kitchen scraps (illegal for poultry in the UK) and no mouldy grain; turkeys are very sensitive to aflatoxin.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. How much and what they eat
  2. Protein by age
  3. Bought feed and dangerous substitutes
  4. Your own mix from week eight
  5. Grazing and greens
  6. Guinea fowl: food on the range
  7. Water, grit and calcium
  8. Growing turkeys on for the holidays
  9. Feeding through the year
  10. Common mistakes
  11. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Feed calculator
  • Feed recipes
  • Weighing and feed diary
  • Stocks and buying
  • Feeding calendar

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

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