Wordless Wednesday: Farm Scenes

Our laying hens in the making.

Ninety-six roosters...dinner is growing.

Our current layers and roosters.

Bourbon Red Turkeys at four and a half weeks old.

Spoken Too Soon

In my last post I bragged about the success of our turkeys so far.  I spoke too soon.  We had a tough time with our turkeys this week.  On Saturday, one of them was dead when I went out to take care of them in the morning.  Sunday everything was fine.  Monday morning Rob woke me to let me know that there were turkeys all over the yard.  I manged to round up six of the turkeys but three remained at large.  Monday afternoon the dogs found one of the turkeys already dead.  I still have no idea what happened to the other two.  Monday night Rob moved the turkeys into one of the chicken tractors.  Tuesday things seemed fine until about 5pm.  When Rob got home from work one of the turkeys was dead and headless inside the pen.  All we can think is that the turkey put his head through the chicken wire and the dog was standing a little too close.

Our five surviving turkeys are in the chicken tractor and we are scrambling to make some arrangements and choices about our turkeys.  This evening we cleared the garage side of our chicken coop and began to make it turkey safe. 

While this turkey season hasn't gone as we'd planned we are not ready to give up the idea of raising heritage breed turkeys.  While we won't be able to sell any birds this year we should have birds for our own Thanksgiving dinner and a breeding pair to start next year. 

Rob did some turkey research and is making plans for a large pen for the turkeys and a brooding area.  While the loss of the turkeys is not what we wanted, we are recovering and pressing forward.  The great part is that we seem to be on the same page now rather than me pushing turkeys and Rob being only begrudgingly involved.  It's good to have a shared vision.

Turkey Trouble

Our turkeys are doing beautifully.  We have 10 healthy bourbon reds that are growing quickly.  They've gotten big enough that we moved them from the large dog crate into a small pen.  Unfortunately, they've also started feathering out.  This is good because we had no power for four days.  That means we had no heat lamp for four days.  The weather was warm enough and the turkeys were hardy enough that they thrived.  The downside to the feathering out is that they can fly, sort of.  They can fly enough to get out of their pen.  Onto plan B.  What was plan B again?  I guess this weekend we'll be figuring out plan B tomorrow.