Rearing Your Own Christmas Dinner

The project will be both challenging and rewarding says Janice Houghton-Wallace

- Janice Houghton-Wallace

Rearing birds for your own or others consumption is certainly a responsibility that should not be taken lightly. How you keep the turkeys, market them and prepare them for dispatching will have an effect on the end product and whether your project has been successful. If you provide a top quality Christmas dinner customers will return the following year.

However, all too often people decide to rear some turkeys for the Christmas market thinking only about how many they should have and how they are going to look after them.

Before buying any turkeys think about who will dispatch them and who your customers will be? It is against the law to slaughter a bird if you haven’t been trained to do so, also, a few turkeys can soon bond with you making it an upsetting task to kill them.

Housing needs to be appropriate and secure so that no predators can enter and although there needs to be ventilation it is essential that the poults (young turkeys) are not in any draughts as they soon chill and perish. It also needs to be spotlessly clean. If any other poultry or livestock have been kept in the building then cleaning out, a thorough pressure wash and then disinfection of the area is a must. Young turkeys can soon pick up bugs from other poultry and contaminated ground so cleanliness should be a priority.