Anatomy & Health Topics

ANATOMY AND HEALTH TOPICS

The Five Welfare Needs

  • Environment — a suitable place to live
  • Diet — the right food in the right amounts
  • Behaviour — being able to behave normally
  • Company — for birds that need to live together
  • Health — protecting turkeys from pain, suffering, injury and disease.

 

They are classed as food producing, not pets. 

Sort out your priorities first: do you want lots of eggs per week, or only a few, some meat, beauty, conserve rare breeds, pets or weeding of a vegetable garden – turkeys just love docks and other weeds?  No single type will fulfil all of these requirements and it is so important that you like the look of the turkeys you buy – they will become part of the family.

Also, check with your local authority that there are no regulations to prevent your keeping poultry and remember to inform your neighbours, re-assuring them that there will not be cockerel noises. Once your new hobby is established, it is amazing how far neighbourly goodwill is enhanced by the gift of fresh eggs.

External points of stag

Positive signs of health in turkeys:

  • dry nostrils
  • red, white and blue skin colours on the head (depends on mood)
  • bright eyes
  • shiny feathers (all present)
  • good weight and musculature for age
  • clean vent feathers with no smell
  • smooth shanks
  • straight toes
  • the bird alert and active, tending to dance when let out in the morning.
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The great secret with all bird keeping is to be able to recognise signs of ill health as a deviation from normal in the early stages. Because they are a prey species, birds have an ability to disguise signs of disease until it is often too late. This is usually the stage when they are presented to a vet, so if a bird can be seen at an earlier stage of a disease there is a much greater chance of a treatment being successful, thus improving welfare.

Digestion 

Turkeys do most of their droppings at night, they prefer a round perch 5-8cm across (2-3 inches across). They have paired blind-ended caeca (see diagram) which is where grass and herbs are digested with different gut bacteria from the main gut, droppings from here arrive every 12 hours or so and the content, texture, smell and colour is different from normal droppings of dark faeces with the white urates – bird form of urine. The caecal contents change depending on what the turkeys have been eating in the way of plants.

Internal Organs

Body Condition Score (BCS) 

  • Feeling the pin bones and breast muscle gives the BCS
  • Pin bones = fat coverage
  • Breast muscle = fitness
  • Scale of 1 (very thin) to 5 (obese)
  • Fit not fat for good egg and meat production

Respiration and ventilation

Turkeys have the typical poultry system of breathing with airsacs which create contain fresh and stale air. The lungs do not move but the ribs move and together with the airsacs the air is passed through the lungs with very efficient oxygen transfer to the bloodstream. Like small birds that sing, turkeys to not have to stop and take a breath to maintain sound as the system is pressurised. Follow the diagram below to see inspiration and expiration.

It is very important to have plenty of ventilation in the top of the housing to avoid high ammonia from the droppings paralysing the cilia (small hairs) in the trachea which act as an escalator to remove mucus. Pathogens (bad microbes) are more likely to thrive in mucus.

Airsacs

Respiratory Method

 Turkey eggs

Turkeys lay large eggs with orange yolks, the shells are freckled and are roughly twice the size of chicken eggs. The hen turkeys have amazing storage areas for semen and hold the record of laying fertile eggs after a stag has not been with them – this record is 72 days, so when thinking of getting breeding pens together, this needs to happen in January so that when the hens lay in March, they will produce eggs sired by the stag they were with in January.

Ovary and Oviduct

Timings

  • 25 hours for a turkey egg
  • 15 minutes for yolk in infundibulum: fertilisation plus chalazae
  • 3 hours in magnum to add albumen
  • 5 hours in isthmus for shell membrane
  • 20 hours in uterus for shell plus pigment
  • 1 minute in vagina

General best practice when obtaining new stock:

  • 1. Quarantine new stock for 2-3 weeks, giving time for any treatment necessary. Ask the seller what the vaccine status is, if any.
  • 2. Get a small amount of the current turkey feed from the seller so no digestion problems.
  • 3. Birds should not be bought from auctions due to the high risk of disease transfer.
  • 4. Sudden death: a postmortem by a vet is useful in potentially reducing the spread of disease.

Diseases are covered in the member area, so do join the Club!