Turkeys in the Straw

Well, the wild turkeys seem to have established residency for the time being on our home farm, so I’ve been reading up on them to try to determine whether we should consider them friend or foe.

First of all, my cursory research on wild turkeys unearthed some controversy over whether they should be considered non-native or native (reintroduced) to California. Apparently the range of the modern wild turkey species Meleagris gallopavo did not reach to California though it covered most of eastern and mid-western U.S. at the time of Columbus. However the fossil record does show a now-extinct separate species of turkey in southern California (Meleagris californica), and another fossil from northern California may be either M. gallopavo or M. californica. So even if the wild turkey hasn’t been in California in recent history, it, or an ancestor, was here in the Pleistocene. So it should not be considered non-native in the same way the European Starling is non-native. The turkeys living here today are M. gallopavo and were first introduced on Santa Cruz Island in 1877, and onto the mainland as a game bird starting in 1908.

I’m encouraged when I read that turkeys’ primary foods are fresh grass and insects, (though some articles suggest they actually eat a wide range of vegetation). A Purdue University entomologist even states that wild turkeys can serve a helpful role in insect pest control on farms and have been used in the south to control hornworms in tobacco fields. This meshes with the habits I’ve observed. I often see the turkeys on the edges of our planted fields, scratching in the grassy areas where we had oat or barley cover crops planted. The turkeys also eat seeds, so they may be having a positive effect by scratching around and eating weed seeds. (Steve feels that I am being overly optimistic here.)

A UC Davis paper on crop damage by wild turkeys was also encouraging. The main complaints about wild turkey damage was from wine grape growers, with evidence that turkeys do eat grapes. Some farmers also complain about crop damage in corn, soybeans, alfalfa and oats. None of these are crops that we grow. On the other hand, turkeys eat a wide variety of pest insects including beetles, true bugs, grasshoppers, and apparently anything they can catch. So, my main question at this point is this:

“Will they eat Bagrada Bugs???”