It is time for the three week old meat chickens to move out to pasture, but in order for that to happen, the turkeys have to move out of the broiler shelters and into their new enclosure, so everything has to move today.
After the deer started eating my garden a few weeks ago, I ended up putting some poultry netting around it to try to protect it from the critters and it has worked really, really well.
Now that I am moving the turkeys outside and going to be taking this netting. I went ahead and bought some new netting for the garden. If you are curious of what type of electric netting to get for your needs, check out my unboxing of Premier One Electric Netting.
I’m going to go ahead and take this netting down and set it up where the turkeys are going to be, and then we’ll be setting up a new net around the garden.
Easy Portable Turkey Shelter for Roosting and Shade and Moving Turkeys
But first, I want to show you the new turkey shelter that I just built. So here it is. It’s pretty simple. Nothing too crazy.
Turkeys, once they are about eight weeks old, they don’t need much shelter at all. They are fully feathered. They are very hearty. So they just need some roost spots, so I have some root bars going across the top and shade with our nice little tarp here.
And this is something that I can move around the pasture. It’s pretty light. It shouldn’t be too difficult for me to move. Some wheels are just going to slide onto these pegs here.
The hardest part by far is going to be actually getting it to the pasture, because once it’s on pasture, it only has to move a little bit from one paddock to the next. It is not going to be far moves, not too difficult, but getting it out there might be a little trickier, so we’ll see how this goes.
Moving the Turkeys Out to Their New Pasture…A Few Different Attempts
Once I move this shelter onto pasture we can now grab the electric netting. That will be step number two for getting the turkeys out.
Okay, the net is set, so now the challenge is going to be getting the turkeys from over there to here. I’m going to grab some feed out of the feed bin and try to lure them with their feeder, maybe see if they’ll follow me. They’ve never had to follow me in their life….so, yeah.
Well that didn’t really work, so we might just have to individually catch them and bring them, which they’re also not very overly fast.
All right, let’s see if I carry the feeder if they’ll come with the feeder. This is not working. I was very optimistic.
We’re going to try a catch and release. Like I said, turkeys are not too hard to catch. Typically, they aren’t the brightest bulb, so they don’t run away too fast, so I’m just going to carry them over and set them in the pen.
All right, so it’s done. It didn’t quite go as planned, but I was able to catch six of them and bring them into the paddock here, and then I was able to herd the remaining four closer so I don’t have to carry them quite so far.
But the birds are in here. I’m going to get their water and their feed and then get this hooked up to the electricity and that will be it for the turkeys. And the chicks can start moving out.
Turkeys are incredible because they can get more of their diet from forage than chickens can, so right now they’re really attacking the broad-leafed greenery that’s in this pasture.
Preparing the Broiler Shelter for the Chicks
The turkeys were just in this shelter behind me here, so the broiler chicks are going to be moving into this.
I’m going to prep it now, clean up the water, make sure there’s a clean feeder in there. I’m going to get some chick feed out here instead of the turkey feed, and I’m going to move it to a nice fresh patch of grass so that it’s completely ready for the new baby chicks to go in there.
Everything is clean and shiny. It’s looking good. I’m bringing the feeders out to pasture. Then I just need to fill the feeders, fill the waters and get the chicks.
Easy Automatic Watering System in the Pasture for the Broilers
I love this watering system. Not quite automatic, so that would be even better. But I don’t have water out in my pastures yet.
This set up enables me to fill this five gallon bucket full of water and it trickles down into the bell waterer below. The water stays really nice and clean. It’s easy to dump out the bell water. It’s not a lot of hanging weight on the shelter because the bell water doesn’t have that much water in it. Most of the weight is from the five gallon bucket sitting here, but it stays pretty good.
When I have the ten turkeys in here, I never had to fill this up completely. I would fill it about that much, maybe a third full, but I do check it twice a day just to be on the safe side. So that is the watering system.
All right, let’s just get the feed in here and get the birds out here. We are prepped and ready for our chicks to go out to pasture. Now, finally, let’s go get them and let’s bring them to their new home.
These guys are hungry because I let them run out of food. The chicks are all on pasture, so our brooder is empty and our 71 birds – 35 in one shelter and 36 and another. They’re all doing great. Let’s check in on them. All right. That’s it for now. Thanks for watching.
