Life On The Farm: Raising Turkeys and Yaks In Albany County, Wyoming

The holiday season has many families looking forward to turkey a little more often than usual, but Corinna and Patrick Schade are thinking about turkeys year-round.

The couple have raised a flock of more than 300 heritage turkeys on their farm in Albany County, Wyoming, called Schadey’s Acres alongside what is a growing herd of yaks — creatures that look a bit like a cross between bison and short-horned cattle.

Their operation didn’t start out as a yak-turkey farm. Yaks took the place of alpacas for fiber and Scottish highland cattle for meat. The turkeys were an afterthought to solve a problem with ticks, but they’re now an integral part of the operation and the couple’s retirement plans.

“Raising turkeys is not an inexpensive task,” Corinna told Cowboy State Daily. “Feeding 350 birds, they’re going through four bags of feed a day. That’s $100 a day to feed them. So, we’re not making money by any stretch, but if we can sell them to recoup some of the loss, and continue to be able to raise turkeys, that’s the shorter-term goal.”

Longer term, the couple would like to find a way to make turkeys more of a year-round treat, instead of something that only spikes during holidays.

“If you take a smoked heritage turkey after your meal, and use it to make a soup broth base, or bone broth, the flavor is just amazing,” Corinna said. “And the nutrients you’re getting are so much better from a turkey that’s been raised in the sunshine on a pasture, eating grasshoppers and ticks.”

Smoked turkey also makes a delicious white chili, Corinna added.

“We don’t think turkey is just for Thanksgiving,” Corinna said. “Because, heck, you get your turkey dinner, and then you get your bone broth, you get your soup stock, and you get all these other things. You can smoke them, and you can do all these great things with turkey.”

Different From Store-Bought Turkeys

Cooking a heritage turkey is quite a bit different than cooking a store-bought bird, though. And that’s a big hurdle the couple faces as they look for a market.

“It’s not like a commercial bird where you’re going to get those big thighs and big breasts and stuff,” Corinna said. “With the heritage bird, there’s more sinew, because they lived life right, and there’s more tendons and things like that. They actually lived a normal life where they were able to run around and build muscle. They had to have some stability so they can escape predators.”

The flavor, however, is unparalleled, Corinna added.

“We don’t inject our birds with salt, we don’t have to,” she said. “We don’t have to make them juicy. They have enough fat to be self-basting, and they’re just amazing birds.”

All that said, though, Corinna acknowledged there is a learning curve to cooking such a bird. 

“I think the heritage turkey is best brined,” she said. “It just makes so much more moisture and juiciness if you brine it.”

So, she’s created a sheet of instructions for the heritage turkeys, explaining how to approach cooking the bird. She even includes a sample brine herbal packet to go home with the bird for the handful of turkeys they’ve sold so far.

The couple don’t actually have a lot of birds for sale yet. The 350 chicks they raised this year aren’t going to be ready for processing until at least February.

That way, all the “ink” spots where pin feathers are going to come in have progressed to the feather stage, Patrick said, so they’re a little easier to process, and look a little more like what customers are used to seeing with turkeys.

Boom, Boom, Boom — Instant Homestead

Turkeys and yaks were never part of the couple’s original plan with their homestead in Wyoming.

Their original idea was to raise Nubian goats for milk,  Scottish Highland cattle for meat, and alpacas for fiber. 

They might still raise Nubian goats for milk, given that yaks are not easy to milk. But life has a way of showing a better path sometimes when we’re open to it, and that’s what happened once the couple landed in Wyoming on their new 144-acre homestead.

Yaks, they soon realized, could combine meat and fiber, and would be well-acclimated to life at 8,000 feet. That way, there wouldn’t be quite so many new things to learn all at once.

“They’re from altitude anyhow,” Corinna said. “And in a cold environment, yaks thrive. They don’t need to be inside. They don’t want to be inside. They can be out there at 20 below and have a calf just fine.”

The turkeys came about after they mentioned their plans to get some guineas for ticks to a knowledgeable neighbor, who suggested they might regret it.

“Guineas are very noisy birds,” Corinna said. “And they’re very flighty. So, we decided to take our neighbor’s advice, and we brought our first box of turkey hatchlings home in April of 21.”

Yaks followed in May, along with bees.

“It was like, boom, boom, boom,” Corinna said. “Instant homestead.”

The turkeys, Corinna added, have been a great choice.

“I never thought they’d be as hardy as they told us they were,” she said. “I mean we’ve had negative 45-degree days, and they’re like, ‘We got this. No problem.’”

Tipsy The Queen Turkey Momma

One of the things Corinna and Patrick love about the yaks and turkeys on their new homestead is just how entertaining they are. 

They are all one-of-a-kind characters. But perhaps none is a bigger character than the star turkey momma, Tipsy.

Tipsy was in the first batch of birds the couple bought, and, after making its journey across country to Wyoming, the poor bird couldn’t even stand up herself.

Corinna was convinced they should probably just let that bird go, as she wasn’t tough enough to be good breeding stock.

But Patrick didn’t have the heart to let her go. There was just something so lovable about Tipsy. He wanted to give her more chances to pull through.

Ultimately, Patrick was proven right.

When the cold winds blow down from the surrounding Laramie Mountains and the big storm clouds boil up, blotting out the sunny sky, more often than not, it’s under Tipsy’s wings that Corinna notices the “littles” gathering. 

Tipsy is a huge Instagram star on Corinna’s Schadey’s Acre feed. There’s a steady stream of videos showing her in the starring role of Turkey Momma, teaching what easily looks like 100 or so littles to take dust baths, eat copious amounts of bugs and grasses, and explore far and wide.

When a red light in the brooder went out one night, Corinna returned home to find that it was Tipsy who’d taken over the situation, in true queen style.

“She walked around the brooder, and determined who needed her the most, and covered them with heat and coos,” Corinna wrote on her Instagram feed. “It’s fun to watch her do her momma thing. She’s SO good at it.” 

That includes chasing away other momma “turkettes” — pretenders to the throne one and all — making sure they know she’s the Queen Turkey.

“Tipsy has been a rock star,” Corinna said, adding that the bird has hatched 99 chicks in all so far. “And there will be more rock stars, like the mom (who is Tipsy’s daughter) that hatched six turkeys in October.”

True to Tipsy form, the little princess had managed to hide a secret nest that no one but Tula, the livestock guardian dog, knew anything about. 

Corinna was then pleasantly surprised one day when six chicks came tumbling out of that secret nest all at once in October.

Golden Honey And Food Freedom 

Corinna and Patrick came to Wyoming from Michigan in 2018 after running headlong into HOA rules that weren’t at all friendly to their desire to grow at least some of their own food.

“We lived in a food desert,” Corinna said. “The food that was available to us was not quality food. By the time it got to us, it was mostly wilted and brown, and that was so frustrating.”

As the couple were nearing retirement, they were feeling a need to be more independent. Not off-the-grid, necessarily, but, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, they liked the sense of freedom that comes with growing your own food.

That way, you’re sure what’s going into the food that’s on the table. And your meals aren’t dependent on what supply chains are doing because of pandemics. 

They also don’t like some of the commercial practices out there. Take turkeys, for example. 

“They’re so dumb they can’t even breed on their own anymore,” Patrick said. “And they’re so heavy they can barely walk. They start dislocating their hips.”

“It’s not a good quality of life,” Corinna agreed. “It’s so sad to watch.”

In Michigan, when Corinna decided she’d like to raise a few chickens, she soon learned that was something her HOA wasn’t going to allow. She also thought about tearing out her lawn to put in gardens, but the HOA wasn’t going to allow that either.

“So, when we were looking for property in Wyoming, that was our first stipulation,” she said. “We wanted to see the HOA before we even saw the property.”

Through that, Corinna discovered some places wouldn’t even let the couple use their own contractor to build — a non-starter for the couple, given Patrick’s construction experience.

The beauty of the Laramie mountains in the distance, the proximity of Vedauwoo-like rocks, the absence of HOA rules that are too restrictive, and Wyoming’s robust food freedom laws have all combined to make their new homestead in Albany County the perfect foundation for their retirement.

Now it’s just a matter of building out their vision one day at a time in a place where yak and turkey heartbeats are happy, and Wyoming honey is always golden and sweet.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.