We here at DeyDey's have been doing chickens for a while now and every Holiday Season, we are asked by our customers: "Are you doing Turkeys this year?"  Every year we consider it and have abandoned the idea until our daughter, Adriana, and her two kids decided to raise some turkeys for 4H.  Adriana and her friend Shawn were very enthusiastic about us providing our community a fresh alternative for the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays.  It was Adriana's positive energy that just caused Nadine and I to say, "What the heck, maybe we should give it a whirl!"

 

We searched for some starter turkey chicks and settled on the Broad Breasted Bronze as our chosen variety.  We heard good things regarding the hardiness of this breed and were excited to get started.  We knew we had enough room for 200 turkeys and perhaps a bit more.  Then we talked to our neighbor at the Vandenberg Village Farmers market who had just moved from the Mid-West to California.  She was an experienced Turkey farmer and just shook her head when we shared our desire to raise Turkeys.  She had two stories to share regarding her experiences.  They are both telling.

 

She had a flock of turkeys in the field quietly basking in the morning sun enjoying the coolness of the morning combined with the sunshine.  A neighboring farmer had contracted with a pilot to do some crop dusting and the pilot chose as his approach to the neighbors farm a path that took him right over the Turkey flock.  As he buzzed the flock, the farmer to her dismay saw all her Turkeys keel over in fright? and go to the big Turkey resting place in the sky.  On a second

occasion, a horse near her Turkey flock (a different one) got spooked and took off at a gallop and raced by her flock.  30% of  her flock departed for greener pastures. 

 

Nadine and I were undaunted by these stories and decided as a measure of safety that we would order 2X as many as we had room for (just in case).  This was a good thing.  We prepared our brooder area for the turkey chicks and picked them up in Fresno and drove them to the ranch.  They were so cute and yet so different from our baby chicks.  We quickly discovered they needed help to find the food and the water even though it was right in front of them.  We lost a good number the first night.  I did some research on the internet and discovered that baby chicks are great teachers for the Turkey chicks.  We had some fresh baby chicks and I immediately put 5 to 10 chicks in each area where there were Turkey chicks.  Lo and behold this worked.  Pretty soon all the Turkey chicks started imitating the baby chicks and we were on a roll. 

 

The next morning our euphoria faded as we discovered lots more dead Turkey chicks.  They had decided to cuddle up for the night and they piled up too high on each other and the ones at the bottom of the pile suffocated.  Heartbroken we retrenched and tried to think of ways to avoid this problem.  Then we came up with the next flash.  Divide the Turkey chicks in a specific brooder area into 4 subareas to keep them from piling on top of each other to such a great extent.  Whew, the next morning this worked.  Next came the skunks.  They found the Turkey chicks delectable and found a way into the brooder, several times I might add.  Then came the heat.  Finally after quite a bit of tribulation, we had a flock of around 220 that was pretty robust and healthy.  It took some real effort to get there and it was totally worthwhile in the end.  The flock is beautiful and they taste just great. 

 

Our turkeys will be available primarily through our internet store.  The cost for the turkeys is $6.75 per pound and the bulk of our turkeys are whole, we do have some of them parted out.

 

Thanks so much for your support of our farm. We at DeyDey's are truly grateful for it.

 

Happy Holidays,

 

The de Bruin family: DeyDey (John), Nana (Nadine), Adriana and of course Alec, Paige, Ivan, Johannes and Hudson (the grandchildren)