Turkey Farming was introduced as an attempt of poverty alleviating tool which can assure sustainable livelihood for rural women in Satara District of Maharashtra. Women were randomly selected from Satara District of Maharashtra as beneficiary. Selected women were trained in rearing, production and marketing of turkeys. Beneficiaries on successful completion of training provided with an unit of 25 turkey poults (4 weeks age) and 50 per cent turkey feed (9 kg). The beneficiaries reared the birds for 12 weeks and sold the birds. Socio-economic survey revealed that majority of turkey rearing women beneficiaries were belonged to young age group; land less and from BPL families. Self Help Group (SHG) activity plays a major role in providing micro finance to the women including agriculture and animal husbandry activities. More than 83 per cent of women beneficiaries were member of SHG out of these 56.00 per cent women borrowed loan from SHG for various reasons such as Agriculture (14.29%), Business (7.14%), Livestock purchase (14.28), Education (7.14) and Domestic purpose (57.14%). Through turkey farming, there was 13.37 per cent rise in income per batch of turkey reared by women beneficiaries belonging to BPL families. It is to note that the rise per batch can be enhanced by rearing two batches of 25 turkey birds annually. With training on turkey farming, rural women are capable of entering in to small scale entrepreneurial activity to generate additional income for their livelihood security.

Keyword: Women empowerment; Turkey Farming;