Bush Turkey repellant

Let me guess, you live in QLD? My 8 y.o. son thought they were funny on our recent visit to QLD.

Yeah balance you are right Yoh! Yeah even my husky has given up trying to chase them as they tend to fly over the fence once she gets close.

Omg CCW! That is not good! There use to be foxes to chase them down and dogs. But they are hunted down so we have this turkey nuisance overpopulating and multiplying like mad! People just dont think. These things need to be in balance. Need predators. And that is not us. Something that will eat their eggs or chase them away.

Oh yeah I just planted some beautiful cucumber seedlings and now there is only one left. I have created a cover for that one seedling in hope I might still get some cueys this summer. I know who ate the other seedlings without a doubt!

I’ve just read about someone doing some archery in their backyard and how they ‘accidently’ got a bush turkey (or two) with the arrow. Food for thought.

Just bumping up this thread because the turkeys seem to be in plague proportions not just in my backyard at the moment but all over the coast everywhere I go I see them! They are so destructive in my backyard – I back onto an acreage and that is what makes it worse here.

I got rid of my compost bin incase that was attracting them and so now I don’t even compost my leftovers anymore (all because of the turkeys). I also don’t give my chickens vege scraps anymore because it just attracts the turkeys too. I now have been starting to lock all my chickens (and their chicken seed) up at night so the turkyes don’t eat their seed at night. There’s nothing I can do during the day because I need to let my chickens out and they need to have access to their food.

Now I know how the word ‘turkey’ is so such a derogative word!!

We have huuuuuuuge issue in our gardens here. use to be a beautiful feature of Om pond and beds, now…huge mound of dirt and all beds dag up together with roots of plants left bare. Some plants just tossed out of thew soil all together. Over one day! Insane! Tried everything, so far nothing worked. The turkey even dag up dirt out of plant pots! So one of plants just left hanging….man, following this thread…

help!!!

Just to clarify something. Not lead bullets fired from a rifle or airgun. Just those sponge rubber NERF rounds. It surprises them that they can be hit from a distance but does in anyway hurt them. They learn quickly to the stage when they see you they will leave. Can be a lot of fun opening the door and seeing them head down and bum up running away

I have tried a lot of things to get rid of them. The best protection I have so far, ridiculous as it seems, is mousetraps and a piece of newspaper to cover them. Where the turkeys enter the yard set the traps, where they dig up the garden set the traps. Where they leave the garden by flying onto the fence, screw mousetraps onto the fence. Every where they dig regularly, where they come in and out of your yard just place mousetraps. They traps will not hurt the turkeys, just surprise them and after a couple of incursions they do not use the track they are used to. When you combine this with using a NERF gun and NERF rounds to shoot at them they do seem to realise pretty quickly what are no go areas. hope it helps

Thankyou so much softness, maybe it is because it’s so dry. We’ve almost come to the conclusion that we’ll fill up the garden with pot plants. Fortunately it hasn’t gone over the back fence to the vegetable garden. It’s somewhat of a consolation to know that it’s an issue for others too!

We get many of them as they visit our chickens (especially to share with our chickens water lately as it hasn’t rained much and I think the bush turkey’s maybe thirsty). They seem to come out more when it hasn’t rained for a while.

I kind of gave up as we back onto bush but occasionally I’ll still run out and chase them! I find they don’t go any new seedlings in my vege patches so that is good – I think that is because they tend to go for the water (and chicken seed) in the open-air chicken area that we have.

I will also keep an eye on this thread in case there are any solutions but I have come to the realisation currently that they were here before us so there’s not much to do. If I can’t beat them, join them kind of idea! ; )