Goats And donkeys together

[Finnie]

One person stated that they would recommend an Emu over a rhea. But overall, the bird would be a later edition after I got the dog and goats but trying to think about my vision now so that I can try to have the proper set up as well building an environment that is both safe and healthy for each animal.

Backyard Chickens has a great forum for ratites. Mostly about emus, but there is a little bit of info on rheas and ostriches. I used to read on there a lot, and it made emus sound really cool, albeit challenging to keep. The other kinds sound extremely difficult/expensive to deal with. You should go over there and read as much as you can, especially some of the really older threads where people journaled raising their emus from babies. It will give you an idea of what to expect.

I didn't give much thought to the type of turkey yet, but given your input probably the broad breasted.

It depends on what your goals for your turkeys are, and what kind of property you have. It would be difficult to breed Broad Breasted, because they are meant to be raised to eating size and be slaughtered. So if one of your goals is to sell poults, heritage turkeys will be better. Selling poults can be profitable. If I sell enough, it can cover the cost of raising my chicken chicks each year.

Yes, heritage turkeys can fly up into tall trees, and visit neighbors. They also fly up onto your roof and cars. But depending on where on your property you have them, that might not be an issue. If it is, you would have to contain them in a covered pen. A little bit expensive to make one that you and they are happy with. But doable.

I used to keep mine in my backyard, along with my chickens. Our property is long and narrow. Along the side our backyard fence is a strip of land, and then our neighbor’s fence. Inevitably during their teenage phase, the turkeys would discover the neighbor’s back yard, and then I would constantly have to be going over and getting them. (Turkeys can jump fences all day long, but as soon as they realize they want to get back, they completely forget how to jump a fence )

Most years it wasn’t a problem, because before very long, they would just quit going over there. But one particular year, they were worse than usual, and they encouraged the chickens to go with them. I knew I had to put a stop to it, so I penned them up in a 10’x40’ dog kennel with chicken wire over the top of it. That was ok for a while, but I just didn’t enjoy keeping caged turkeys like I had enjoyed free ranging turkeys. So I sold them all and went turkeyless for over a year.

Now I have a large area, maybe 150’ square, cordoned off with electric wire. That seems to be keeping my 3 new turkeys and their one poult contained. The poult hasn’t hit the “let’s fly over the fence and see what we can get into” stage yet. So I’m yet to see how the wire works for juveniles. But the adults seem to respect it.

You could try raising some turkeys and see how it goes. Then tweak your system until it works. I like them. I think they are an animal worth having. (We have never eaten one of ours yet, but we always say we are going to. )