Why We Raise Turkeys Indoors: Winter Storm Ion

We’re bracing for the cold.  But our turkeys will never know.



These are current windchills in central Iowa, and it’s forecasted to get even colder tonight. 

Windchills may reach –50 degrees farenheit.  That’s more than 140 degrees lower than our youngest turkeys like it.

But, while schools are cancelled and humans hunker down under blankets, our turkeys will have no idea that record setting cold weather has moved in.

Our turkeys, all 40,000 of them, will be safe and warm inside our barns.  They will continue to have 24 hour access to food and clean water, and the temperature in the barn will stay fairly steady.



To make sure of this, Bart has done a little bit of work to prepare for Winter Storm Ion, similar to this blizzard last February.  This time, because of the extreme cold, he’s put heat tape and insulation on the tubes that carry feed into the building, so that the feed doesn’t freeze up.  Tonight, and again tomorrow morning, he will check all of the barns to make sure that the turkeys seem comfortable and the equipment is working properly.  If anything goes wrong in between, the barns will send out an alarm, and Bart will bundle up to fix the problem.

But through it all, the turkeys will have no idea what’s going on, and that’s one of the biggest reasons we raise our birds indoors.  Our state of the art barns provide protection from the elements during every season and all types of weather, including record setting cold caused by Winter Storm Ion.
 

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Read how others are dealing with the cold:

Janice at My Colorful Adventures in St. Louis
Carolyn at Carolyn Cares in Minnesota
Kellie from Iowa
Barbara in Virginia