Estimate projected live weight, dressed weight, total feed consumption, feed cost, and profit per bird for your turkey flock — by breed and age. Covers Broad Breasted White, Broad Breasted Bronze, Heritage breeds, and Midget White.
From hatch to target harvest age. Highlighted row = current age; bold row = harvest week.
| Week | Live Wt (lbs) | Weekly Gain (lbs) | FCR | Weekly Feed (lbs) | Cumulative Feed (lbs) |
|---|
The Broad Breasted White is the dominant commercial turkey in the United States for a straightforward reason: it converts feed to meat faster than any other breed. A BBW tom can reach 20+ lbs live weight in 16–18 weeks, which means lower total feed cost, less exposure to predators and weather, and a shorter investment cycle. For homesteaders growing turkeys to fill the freezer or sell at Thanksgiving, the BBW is a legitimate choice — it's what grocery store turkeys are, and the meat is mild, tender, and consistently sized. The Broad Breasted Bronze is essentially the same performance profile with darker pin feathers, slightly richer flavor, and a modest 2–3 week slower finish time.
Heritage breeds — Narragansett, Bourbon Red, Standard Bronze, Black Spanish, and others — take 24–28 weeks to reach market weight and produce a smaller carcass (12–16 lbs dressed for most breeds). They cost more in feed per lb of meat and require significantly more pasture time and management. So why do people pay $6–$12 per pound for heritage birds? Flavor and fat distribution. Heritage birds develop a more complex fat-to-muscle ratio from genuine outdoor activity. They can breed naturally (BBW and BBB cannot — their breast muscle is so large they require artificial insemination), so you can maintain a self-sustaining flock. They're also notably more cold-hardy and disease-resistant than Broad Breasted varieties, which is relevant if you're running birds on pasture through variable spring weather.
The Midget White is a heritage-derived small breed created in the 1960s for small families and smaller ovens. It reaches 8–10 lbs dressed in 24–28 weeks — closer to a large roasting chicken in final size. If you need a bird that fits in a standard roasting pan without modification and serves 4–6 people, the Midget White is purpose-built for exactly that. It's also well-suited to small pasture paddocks where a full-size tom would be disruptive.
Turkey nutrition requirements shift significantly as birds age, which is why commercial turkey programs use a minimum of three distinct feed phases. During the starter phase (weeks 0–8), poults require 28% crude protein to support rapid bone, organ, and early muscle development. This is the most nutritionally expensive phase per pound of feed. Moving birds off starter too early — onto grower or a generic flock raiser — frequently causes leg weakness, reduced growth rates, and higher mortality, since young poults prioritize skeletal development before muscle mass. High-quality starter crumbles or mash (not pellets, which are too large for poults) are critical in the first four weeks.
The grower phase (weeks 8–16) drops to 20% protein as the skeletal frame is mostly established and the bird shifts to muscle mass accumulation. The finisher phase (weeks 16 and beyond) drops further to 16% protein. These numbers represent typical commercial minimums; pastured birds or birds with significant forage access may need slightly higher protein supplementation in feed since they'll consume more energy in activity and thermoregulation. In practice, if your turkeys have access to pasture with insects, legumes, or clover, their feed conversion ratios will be slightly better than the 3.5–4.5x finisher estimates used in this calculator.
Heritage turkey poults typically cost $10–$20 each, compared to $4–$8 for BBW or BBB poults. The price difference flows from basic economics of slower growth. A heritage turkey takes 26 weeks to reach market weight. A BBW takes 18. That's 8 additional weeks of labor, feed, housing, and mortality risk per bird for the heritage producer. Heritage hatcheries also maintain smaller breeding flocks — they can't scale production the way commercial hatcheries can because the breeds require more space, more management, and do not respond well to the industrial poultry conditions that make BBW production economical. Add that heritage poults sell in a seasonal window (spring, for Thanksgiving harvest), and the supply is inherently constrained. If you want to grow heritage birds commercially, the economics work only if you command a significant price premium — and increasingly, direct-to-consumer Thanksgiving turkey orders at $8–$12/lb dressed fill up months in advance in most markets with a customer base willing to pay for the story and flavor.
How you process your turkeys matters for both cost and sales options. USDA-inspected processing is required to sell turkey meat in most retail and farmers market settings — birds must be processed at an approved facility with a federal inspector present. This typically costs $8–$20 per bird depending on facility, weight, and region, plus transportation. USDA inspection allows you to sell the processed meat across state lines and to restaurants and retailers.
On-farm exempt (sometimes called "custom exempt" or the "1,000-bird exemption" in some states) allows small producers to slaughter and process their own birds without USDA inspection, typically limited to 1,000 birds per year, and the birds must be sold directly to end consumers — not to restaurants, butcher shops, or grocery stores. Requirements vary by state. Some states also have an "on-farm sales" exemption that allows uninspected birds to be sold directly at the farm without a separate facility. If you plan to sell turkeys, check your state's specific regulations before investing in processing equipment or scheduling birds at a facility.
Plan for 10–15% mortality during the brooding phase (weeks 0–4), even with good management. Poults are fragile in ways that chicks are not — they can be slow to find feed and water, which is why many experienced growers place colored marbles in the water font and sprinkle feed directly on paper towels for the first 3–5 days to attract attention. Pasting (fecal matter blocking the vent) is common and must be cleared daily in the first week. Poults that pile up in corners are too cold; those that spread to the perimeter and pant are too hot. Maintain the brooder at 95°F for the first week, dropping 5°F per week. By week 6–7 at 65–70°F ambient temperature, most flocks no longer need supplemental heat. Turkeys are significantly more cold-sensitive as poults than chicks, but adult birds are remarkably cold-hardy — Narragansett and Bourbon Red in particular handle cold winters well.
Heat management in summer is the opposite problem. Turkeys are prone to heat stress above 85°F, particularly Broad Breasted breeds whose muscle mass generates significant body heat. Provide shade, consistent access to cool fresh water, and consider running birds in a shaded paddock during midday heat. Mortality from heat stress in the finisher phase (weeks 16–20) can be significant for BBW birds in hot climates — they're carrying 20+ lbs and have limited thermoregulatory capacity. If you're raising fall-harvest turkeys in the South or Southwest, plan your brooder start date so birds hit the high-heat finisher phase in September and October rather than July and August.
Direct-to-consumer pasture-raised turkey prices vary widely by region, breed, and marketing channel, but general benchmarks as of 2025–2026 are $4–$7/lb for Broad Breasted birds and $7–$14/lb for heritage breeds. Whole birds sold frozen at farmers markets typically command 10–15% less than fresh-chilled birds sold directly for Thanksgiving week. Value-added products — ground turkey, turkey sausage, turkey stock — often improve per-pound economics by utilizing parts that wouldn't otherwise be sold. Some producers offer "deposit" pre-orders in June–July for November Thanksgiving birds, which provides operating capital and guaranteed demand before growing season is complete. If you're trying to cover feed costs and labor through turkey sales, heritage breeds at premium prices are the math that works; BBW at commodity prices rarely pencils out for small operations against commercial competition on volume alone.
The FCR values used in this calculator — 2.5 for starter, 3.5 for grower, 4.5 for finisher — are reasonable mid-range estimates for commercially managed Broad Breasted birds. Heritage birds on pasture will typically see FCRs 10–20% higher because they're burning more energy in activity. BBW birds in temperature-controlled confinement may achieve FCRs closer to 2.0–2.5 in the grower phase under optimal conditions. Pasture, season, feed quality, stocking density, and temperature all affect actual FCR. Think of this calculator as a planning tool that will get you within 15–25% of actual feed consumption — good enough to budget and order feed, not a guarantee of outcome.
Yes. Turkey starter must be higher protein than chicken starter — 28% vs. the typical 20% for chick starter. Generic chick starter will not support the rapid growth of turkey poults and frequently causes leg problems and increased mortality. More critically, medicated chick starter often contains amprolium at a dose safe for chickens but potentially harmful to turkeys in high quantities. Use turkey-specific starter or a non-medicated game bird starter at 28–30% protein for the first 8 weeks. After week 8, you can often transition to a quality 20% game bird or all-flock grower pellet for the grower phase.
Ten to twenty birds is a manageable first grow-out. It's large enough to absorb the 10–15% typical mortality without being left with too few birds, while being small enough that a health or predator problem doesn't become catastrophic. For Thanksgiving sales, 15–20 birds at $8–$12/lb heritage pricing or 20–30 birds at BBW pricing can generate meaningful revenue. Start smaller than you think you need — the management learning curve for turkeys is steeper than chickens, particularly around brooding and heat/cold management. Most people who start with 50 birds their first year wish they'd started with 15.
Keeping turkeys and chickens together is generally not recommended. Chickens can carry Histomonas meleagridis (blackhead disease) asymptomatically — the protozoan is deadly to turkeys, causing liver and cecal lesions and high mortality rates. Blackhead is primarily transmitted through infected cecal worm eggs. If you have existing chickens on your property, keep turkeys in a completely separate pasture that has not been used by chickens for at least 2–3 years. If you must house them near each other, use hardware cloth barriers that prevent manure contact. The risk is particularly high in wet, warm conditions where the protozoan persists longer in soil. Heritage breeds tend to be more resilient than Broad Breasted types to blackhead, but no breed is immune.
For Broad Breasted birds, target weight is the primary indicator — BBW toms at 18–20 lbs live weight and hens at 12–14 lbs live weight are typically at prime harvest age. Older birds develop tougher, chewier meat as connective tissue stiffens. For heritage breeds, age range is more flexible — most are harvested between 24–28 weeks, but some producers prefer 30+ weeks for maximum fat development and flavor. Look at breast fullness (the muscle should round clearly over the keel bone) and feather development — birds entering a second molt get pin feathers throughout the breast, which makes plucking significantly more difficult and time-consuming. Timing harvest to land between molts is a practical consideration beyond target weight alone.