Category: turkeys (Page 3 of 3)

Trying to learn from my mistake of how we handled turkey moms wanting to sit out in the woods by just trying to put them in the barn at night but them going right back to their nests the next day, and us loosing one of our sitting hen turkeys earlier in the year because of that, this time when Trina our original turkey started sitting, we grabbed her and put her and her eggs in the summer kitchen.

Well, thanks to the Lord, that worked out much better! With those eggs and some new ones she laid, and hoping at least some of the eggs were fertilized, she indeed hatched out two new chicks!

Here are a couple of pictures of the turklets a couple of weeks old:

They don’t always get very far, not even to two weeks sometimes, as we’ve had them die young in the past, but I also think some of that was due to me getting too close to the mama and causing her to panic and them maybe getting stepped on. And so, I tried not to do that as much, or much more slowly, and by God’s graces, the chicks are still going! Here they are just the other day:

And here is the video of their life adventure so far. The introduction of them to the flock didn’t go so well, and Trina was picked on a lot, but eventually she apparently got tired of it and went on the offensive, and that helped back off everyone:

Also, the young turkey in the last turkey chick blog post mentioned above, which we called Halia, ended up being a tom. Ha! And so, we’re going to call him Halio now. 🙂 It seemed to really take him a long time before showing male characteristics — only recently have we discovered this.

He is on the left in this picture:

And here is one of all of the flock minus Trina and her little ones:

Once again, we are very grateful to the Lord for these provisions, and the continued health and safety! We pray they go to uses that glorifies Him and benefits His Church!

— David

One thing we’ve discovered with our turkey hens is that they like to make nests out in the woods, and so when one doesn’t come back at night, we go looking for it where we have seen them about during the day, or try to find them the next day, and thanks to the Lord we have often been able to find them, usually with broken eggs around them, as the critters get to them if they’re left, most likely over night.

Well, our brown hen, Haddie, from last year’s hatching from Trina disappeared. We could not find her, and she didn’t show up at all again around the homestead, as they often do at least in the morning before going back to sit.

One day when going back into the woods to cut fire wood, I saw a bunch of what appeared to be turkey feathers, and tracked them along a path. Sadly, it appeared she was taken out by some critter, although she moved quite a bit before the feather trail stopped, so she gave it a go. And so, we lost Haddie, and we miss her.

However, we were able to find our other new hen from last year, Tasha, with maybe 8-10 eggs under her, so we grabbed her and them and put them in the summer kitchen.

And by God’s graciousness, she hatched out three new little live turklets! (That’s what I call them, like I might call a chicken chick a chicklet 🙂 ). Sadly here though, two of them died when fairly young, but we do have the one left, who at the time of this writing is about 2/3 the size of her mommy now! We believe she is a hen as well, she looks a lot like Tasha, and we’ve decided to call her Halia, in honor of Haddie — the “Ha” from the start of her name, and that “Halia” apparently means “Remembrance of a loved one” in Hawaiian.

Here the pair are back in June:

And here is a video of them in the summer kitchen, and then when we released them to be free:

Finally, turkeys do silly things, and here’s a video example, with Lil Hank from last year’s hatching tapping on the screen and saying hello through the house window…while perched on a sawhorse!

As always, we are very thankful to the Lord for granting these provisions, and the health and safety He did grant to any of them! It’s only of His will, graces and mercies we are supplied with anything, where we deserve nothing, and even to have them taken away for sin. And so, we are very grateful!

— David

After what we believe is a Spanish black heritage female turkey just showed up on our farm one day, and after finding a local heritage turkey breeder and fetching a tom for her, and after not really seeing much go on between them, something happened the other day…

Trina, our turkey hen, was prone to sitting on her eggs. She tried once in the orchard, but we got her out of there as that’s just a situation for her to get eaten up. She also had sat on eggs on our hay stack in the barn, but we had problems with a big snake that was eating her eggs. And then once more, she started sitting on her eggs in the hay manger we have in the barn stall. She also had a little chicken hen helper who would take her eggs and sit on them, and then Sue would move them back under Trina.

Well, what do you know! About 25 days later…little cheep, cheeps coming out from underneath Trina! Ha! How neat is that? What a nice and gracious gift from God!

I figured it was time to get her and them out of the barn as 1) they’re snake bait, and 2) once she goes mobile they’re cat bait. I didn’t really know where to put her other than the summer kitchen, but all we had were the little chicken cage-pens. So, I took a couple apart and strung them together to make a larger pen, and it created a nice area! And then we moved them — we had found one dead next to her, and we believe there were another two that didn’t make it out of the egg, but she had 3 live ones under her, which Sue scooped up as I grabbed Trina, and now they’re all in there very nicely, all still alive! How neat!

Here is a picture of them:

And a video of the adventure!

We are thankful to the Lord for this very nice, gracious and unexpected gift! May they go to good use, so God would glorify Himself in some way, and that maybe His people might benefit!

— David