Harnessing Foreign Turkey Farming Business 

Turkey

July 20, 2018//-Turkey is a robust large bird raised mostly for meat. While turkey farming is popular in US, Europe, however, turkey has good potential in our country especially in the areas where people prefer lean meat.

Naturally low fat and full of flavour our turkeys are not only tasty but very healthy for you and your family.

Foreign Turkey rearing should always begin with getting a good batch of either eggs or chicks from reputable suppliers only. If you have an incubator set up, you might want to acquire fertilized turkey eggs so that you can monitor their growth from the earliest possible time.

However, if that is not possible, you might want to order in chicks from turkey farms or supplier that you trust instead, you can get it from Kaduna, Ibadan and Owerri.

How you keep the turkeys and what you feed them with will inevitably have an effect on the end product and it is in your interest to produce as healthy and succulent a bird as possible.

Young turkeys require a higher level of protein (27- 28%) in the feed than chicks so the need to begin life on turkey starter crumbs. They then progress to turkey grower pellets at around 7-8 weeks.

It is as well to combine the feed for a few days to allow the birds to get used to the new introduction.

Some feed manufacturers have a turkey rearer pellet for poults between 5-8 weeks of age.

Turkey

This is very similar to grower pellets, but smaller in size to allow the birds to get used to a pellet. When 16-17 weeks old, the turkeys will be put onto a finisher ration if they are to be table birds.

The Nigerian government placed a ban on the importation of poultry products especially turkey (though has been effective) into the country some years back, precisely 10 years ago.

This shows that a lot of Nigerians consume turkey meat, and despite the fact that the demand for frozen turkey meat is high, we don’t have enough large scale commercial turkey farms in Nigeria, the managing Director of ECEE GLOBAL, an agro allied business firm in Gombe Road Kaduna, said that foreign turkey farmers are mostly seasonal farmers, and foreign turkey business is a sure way to work out of poverty because at 16 to 18 weeks it is matured and weighs up to 20kg,this bread he said is from Europe and America and can go for 12,000.00 to 15,000.00 depending on your location of sales.

He added that presently people have to book for to rear for salah and now booking is on for Christmas and New Year purpose which will end by end of the month.

Feeding

If raising turkeys commercially, there are around four different feeds to give the birds as they are grown from day-old to market: the starter, grower and finisher feeds.

Turkeys grown on commercial feed programmes may grow faster, but this feeding programme will also produce good turkeys. Plenty of water, small grains, mashes and good pasture should be provided at all times.

Diseases and Cannibalism

Diseases

Disease can be controlled with proper care, isolation and sanitation. It has been said that turkeys look for an opportunity to die rather than living in bad conditions.

Turkeys may suffer from coccidiosis, airsacculitis, fowl pox, typhoid/cholera and blackhead, which are caused by organisms specific to each disease.

Isolation ensures that these organisms do not come into contact with these birds.

Cannibalism

With turkeys, cannibalism is a problem but this can be avoided by providing enough space to the turkeys.

A good remedy for cannibalism is de-beaking, which entails removing a portion of the upper beak and little of the lower beak, which can be done easily on young birds.

By Agbaji Chinedu

This article was originally on independent.ng.

 

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