Turkeys are a popular pet to keep for both pets and for meat but there are some aspects of turkey keeping which make them different and slightly harder to breed and keep. Hatching your own turkey eggs can be fun and is relatively easy. Turkeys need the early spring light to start laying and they normally start to lay in April, sometimes earlier if there is artificial light, they will go on to lay until June and sometimes a little later. Again you will have more success incubating turkey eggs than if you were to leave it to natural incubation and once the eggs are collected, you should leave it no more than ten days before you incubate any eggs. Always follow the guidelines on your incubator and automatic incubators are always better as they will rotate your eggs automatically. The temperature should be 37.5o C with the humidity at 55%.
The eggs will begin to pip at around 25 days and the temperature should then be decreased to 37o C and the humidity increased to 75%. The eggs should hatch at around day 28 and you should leave your chicks in the incubator until they are dry and fluffy and moving around.
Turkeys are relatively easy to keep and should be fed on chick crumb to begin with before moving on to pellets. There are things to watch out for such as black head which is a protozoan disease of fowl which will affect the liver. Black head is a parasite organism and once it has affected one bird it is very likely that it will affect others very quickly. The worm lives in soil and many people who keep turkeys prefer to keep them in enclosed solid concrete areas for this reason. Once the parasite has invaded the turkey it quickly infects the large intestine and then the liver. The birds will generally seem off colour and will spend large periods of time away from the other birds and sitting down. They will most probably have diarrhoea which will sometimes be mixed with blood. Vets will sometimes supply something you can put in the turkeys feed to help prevent black head but many birds who contract it will die. Usually it is too late from the time you notice they have it to seeking treatment and it can and often is devastating for some turkey flocks because of the sheer speed it can affect the whole flock.
Having said all of that, there are things you can do to help prevent blackhead, turkeys should not be kept with other fowl and where possible should be kept on clean, well drained pasture where it is possible they can move around.