Turkeys are a familiar sight, whether in agricultural settings or their wild habitats, and a common question arises regarding their diet: are they carnivores, herbivores, or omnivores? The answer is that turkeys are omnivores, meaning their diet naturally includes both plant and animal matter. This dietary flexibility allows them to thrive in various environments by adapting to available food sources.
Understanding Dietary Labels
A carnivore is an animal that primarily consumes other animals, deriving its nutrition from meat. In contrast, a herbivore is an animal whose main food source is plant-based, with their digestive systems adapted to process large amounts of plant material. An omnivore, such as a turkey, possesses a diet that includes both plant-derived and animal-derived food.
The Wild Turkey’s Diverse Menu
Wild turkeys are opportunistic foragers, consuming a wide array of foods depending on seasonal availability and their habitat. Plant matter constitutes a large part of their diet, including hard mast such as acorns, beech nuts, pecans, and hickory nuts, particularly in fall and winter. They also eat various soft mast like crabapples, hackberries, blueberries, wild grapes, and black cherries, along with seeds from grasses, wildflowers, and even ponderosa pines. Beyond fruits and seeds, turkeys forage on plant buds, shoots, leaves, roots, and tubers, and will consume waste grains like corn, wheat, oats, and soybeans from agricultural fields.
Their animal-based diet is equally diverse, providing essential protein. Wild turkeys regularly consume a variety of invertebrates such as grasshoppers, beetles, grubs, caterpillars, spiders, ants, snails, slugs, and worms. They also prey on small vertebrates, including small amphibians like frogs, salamanders, and tadpoles, and reptiles such as lizards and snakes. Young turkeys, called poults, rely heavily on insects for their first few weeks of life due to their high protein and energy needs for rapid growth. Turkeys actively forage by scratching in leaf litter and pecking at the ground, sometimes even venturing into water for fish and crayfish.
Domestic Turkeys: A Different Plate
The diet of domesticated turkeys differs considerably from their wild counterparts due to human management. Farm-raised turkeys are typically fed commercially formulated diets designed to promote rapid growth and provide complete nutrition. These feeds are balanced mixtures of grains and oilseeds, commonly including corn, soybean meal, wheat, barley, and canola.
Commercial turkey feeds are supplemented with specific proteins, vitamins, and minerals to meet the birds’ nutritional requirements at various life stages. For example, young poults receive “starter” mixtures with higher protein levels, which are then adjusted as they mature to “grower” and “finisher” feeds.
The Omnivore Advantage
The omnivorous nature of turkeys provides them with significant benefits, especially in terms of adaptability. Their flexible diet allows them to exploit a wide range of food sources, ensuring survival across different environments and through seasonal changes when certain foods might be scarce.
Turkeys possess specific physical characteristics that support their varied diet. They use their strong legs for scratching through leaf litter to uncover food items and their beaks to pick up small seeds or larger prey. Since turkeys do not have teeth, their digestive system includes a specialized two-part stomach: the proventriculus, which uses digestive enzymes to break down food, and the gizzard. The gizzard is a muscular organ containing small stones, or grit, that the turkey intentionally swallows, which mechanically grind down tough plant matter and hard-bodied insects.