What Do Wild Turkeys Eat? Diet Through the Year

This page follows a wild turkey through the year at the table: the nuts, seeds, leaves and insects it lives on, how the menu changes with the seasons and from region to region, what poults need, and why wildlife agencies ask people not to feed turkeys. For the bird itself, see the Wild Turkey guide.

Mostly plants. Wild turkeys live on nuts, seeds, fruit, leaves, buds and roots, with a smaller share of animal food: insects and other small invertebrates, and now and then a salamander. In one study, insects and snails made up about 10% of the year's diet, and they also swallow grit, which matters to a bird that grinds its food rather than chewing it.¹ One extension guide gives the same rough split: about 90% plant matter and 10% animal.²

Above all, turkeys are adaptable. What they eat depends on where they live and what the season offers, and a flock goes where the food is.¹

In eastern forests, the year turns on nuts. From fall to early spring, turkeys scratch through the leaf litter for acorns and other nuts, known as mast. In late spring and summer they switch to grass and sedge seeds and insects, and when deep snow buries the nuts they make do with whatever sticks out of it.¹

In the East, acorns are the staple from fall to spring: red, white, chestnut and black oak acorns in the Northeast and live oak acorns in Florida, and acorns matter in the South and West too, alongside other foods. Beechnuts, black cherries and white ash seeds join them in the Northeast, flowering dogwood seeds in the South, and pecans in Texas.¹

A turkey swallows nuts whole. They wait in the crop, a pouch in the throat, then pass to the gizzard, a muscular stomach strong enough to crack hickory nuts.¹

In summer, turkeys move out to fields and openings and feed on the seeds of grasses and sedges. A turkey grabs a stem in its bill and strips off many seeds in one movement.¹

Green plants matter too. In Texas, Rio Grande turkeys ate more green plant material than anything else, and Merriam's turkeys in Arizona lean on grasses and forbs all year, especially in years when the acorn crop fails. Tubers count too: chufa is an important food in northern Florida, and in a study in northeastern Mississippi spicebush, chufa and wild grape stood out among the winter foods for their food value.¹

Insects are a small but steady part of the diet, and in summer turkeys go after them on purpose. Flocks sometimes walk side by side across a field with a hen near the middle, snapping up grasshoppers as they go and keeping their spacing with constant soft purring; in the woods they take caterpillars.¹

In Florida, animal food was 3.6% of what turkeys ate by weight, mostly dragonflies, grasshoppers and caterpillars. Laying hens need calcium that a plant diet lacks, and snails make up the difference. In hard winters turkeys take salamanders, and in Hawaii, turkeys on some islands have learned to forage for crabs on the beach.¹

Insects matter most at first, though not everywhere. In their first weeks, poults (baby turkeys) get much of their protein from insects and other small invertebrates. For the first few days the hen hands food straight to her poults; after that they feed themselves, and she points out insects to them with a hissing call and pecks.¹

In a study of Eastern poults in Mississippi, animal food made up 79% of what they ate at 3 to 7 days old, about half (54%) at 8 to 14 days, and only 13% by 22 to 38 days. Beetles, true bugs and grasshoppers were 83% of the animal food, then snails, spiders and pill bugs; sedge and blackberry seeds led the plant food.³ Not every study agrees on the first days: young Florida poults, 1 to 14 days old, ate 75% plant food and 25% animal food by volume.⁴ Later in summer, insects stay important: in Wisconsin, invertebrates, mostly grasshoppers, were 68% of what 45 brood-flock turkeys collected in crop fields had eaten.⁵

So hens take their broods to grassy places full of insects.⁶ Where Rio Grande turkeys have declined, researchers found fewer invertebrates for the poults to eat.¹ More on the first weeks: wild turkey nesting.

Each turkey eats what its country grows. The table sums up studies of five subspecies.¹ For where each one lives, see where wild turkeys live.

Turkeys feed on the ground in flocks, scratching through the leaf litter, and sometimes climb into shrubs or low trees for fruit. They feed hardest twice a day: for 2 to 3 hours after flying down from the roost around daybreak, and again for 2 to 3 hours before going back to roost near sunset.¹

Turkeys are built for lean times. They can lay down a lot of fat, they burn energy slowly, and they keep themselves warm efficiently.¹ They will dig down through 4 to 6 inches of snow for food, and a healthy turkey can go about two weeks without eating.⁶ In hard winters fasts can last up to 19 days; hens are more at risk of starving than males, and young hens suffer most in severe winters.¹

Turkeys drink before they go to roost and after they fly down in the morning, when water is nearby. In dry country they can get the water they need from the plants they eat.¹

Yes, but probably not enough to lower tick numbers. In experiments with five captive wild turkeys, almost all the black-legged (deer) ticks placed on them vanished: of 165 nymphs, 152 were apparently eaten as the birds preened. But in fenced plots of forest, about as many adult ticks were recaptured where turkeys foraged (89.5%) as where they were kept out (92.2%), so turkey foraging is unlikely to reduce the number of adult ticks in an area.⁷

Turkeys also carry ticks. In California, 50 of 113 turkeys checked (44.2%) carried 361 ticks, mostly western black-legged tick nymphs, yet only 1 of 90 blood samples held Lyme disease bacteria⁸; in eastern Kansas, 113 ticks taken from 12 turkeys were all lone star tick nymphs.⁹ As one state wildlife agency puts it, turkeys "carry a few ticks and eat a few ticks."¹⁰ We found no study behind the often-repeated claim that a turkey eats 200 ticks a day.

Turkeys eat crops where they find them, but in the best-studied case most of it was grain left after harvest. In southwestern Wisconsin, among turkeys collected in crop fields, farm foods were 52% of the diet in the growing season, 77% of that corn, nearly all of it waste grain, and little of the crop that could be harvested was eaten.⁵ In the Texas Panhandle, peanuts are among their main foods.¹

Turkeys often get the blame for damage done by other animals. In Ohio, investigators found no turkey damage at all in 23 of 26 crop-damage complaints against turkeys in 1995-98; damage by deer, raccoons and other animals had been blamed on turkeys seen feeding in the fields.¹¹ A survey of wildlife agencies across the US and Ontario found 93% of confirmed cases were light, and in 46% of the cases inspected, most of the damage was by another species.¹² A review concluded that turkey damage is usually minor and often overestimated, with occasional damage to specialty crops, lawns and flower beds.¹³ As turkeys and people live closer together, some towns also report damaged plantings.¹

No. State wildlife agencies advise against it. Feeding helps diseases spread among turkeys and wears away their wild instincts.¹⁴ Turkeys that are fed lose their fear of people and can turn aggressive, a habit that is hard to break once it starts.¹⁵ Even in hard winters, feeding is generally not needed.⁶

If turkeys visit your yard, pick up fallen fruit and pet food.¹⁶

1. McRoberts, J. T., Wallace, M. C., Eaton, S. W. (2020). Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), version 1.0. Birds of the World (A. F. Poole, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.wiltur.01
2. Moorman, C. E., Megalos, M., Bowen, L. T. Wild turkey (Working with Wildlife; published 2019, revised 28 May 2024). NC State Extension. Accessed 27 October 2026. Source
3. Hurst, G. A., Stringer, B. D. (1975). Food habits of wild turkey poults in Mississippi. Wildlife Society Bulletin S1 (1975): 76-85. doi:10.1002/j.2328-5540.1975.tb00093.x
4. Barwick, L. H., Hetrick, W. M., Williams, L. E., Jr. (1973). Foods of young Florida wild turkeys. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Game and Fish Commissioners: 92-102. Accessed 27 October 2026. Source
5. Paisley, R. N., Wright, R. G., Kubisiak, J. F. (1995). Use of agricultural habitats and foods by wild turkeys in southwestern Wisconsin. Wildlife Society Bulletin S1 (1995): 69-73. doi:10.1002/j.2328-5540.1995.tb00214.x
6. New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Wild Turkey. NYSDEC. Accessed 26 October 2026. Source
7. Ostfeld, R. S., Lewis, D. N. (1999). Experimental studies of interactions between wild turkeys and black-legged ticks. Journal of Vector Ecology 24(2): 182-186. Accessed 27 October 2026. Source
8. Lane, R. S., Kucera, T. F., Barrett, R. H., Mun, J., Wu, C., Smith, V. S. (2006). Wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) as a host of ixodid ticks, lice, and Lyme disease spirochetes (Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato) in California state parks. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 42(4): 759-771. doi:10.7589/0090-3558-42.4.759
9. Mock, D. E., Applegate, R. D., Fox, L. B. (2001). Preliminary survey of ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) parasitizing wild turkeys (Aves: Phasianidae) in eastern Kansas. Journal of Medical Entomology 38(1): 118-121. doi:10.1603/0022-2585-38.1.118
10. Kintz, L. The great tick debate (blog, 22 November 2023). Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Accessed 27 October 2026. Source
11. Swanson, D. A., Meyer, G. E., Stoll, R. J. (2000). Crop damage by wild turkey in Ohio. Wildlife Society Bulletin S1 (2000): 139-143. doi:10.1002/j.2328-5540.2000.tb00263.x
12. Tefft, B. C., Gregonis, M. A., Eriksen, R. E. (2005). Assessment of crop depredation by wild turkeys in the United States and Ontario, Canada. Wildlife Society Bulletin 33(2): 590-595. doi:10.2193/0091-7648(2005)33[590:AOCDBW]2.0.CO;2
13. Groepper, S. R., Hygnstrom, S. E., Houck, B., Vantassel, S. M. (2013). Real and perceived damage by wild turkeys: a literature review. Journal of Integrated Pest Management 4(1): 1-5. doi:10.1603/IPM12013
14. Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Wild Turkey (fact sheet, rev. 11/2016). CT DEEP Wildlife Division. Accessed 26 October 2026. Source
15. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Wild Turkeys. FWC, Living with wildlife. Accessed 26 October 2026. Source
16. City of Boise, Idaho Department of Fish and Game. City of Boise and IDFG run wild turkey educational campaign (February 2026). City of Boise News. Accessed 27 October 2026. Source