Historic Presence of Jungle Fowl in the American Deep South

[Lauravonsmurf]

I really do enjoy this thread too... beautiful birds

 

[SarahGfa]

No, the turkey is there as a free range survival experiment. I have that jake and three turkey hens that I hatched in October. I’m attempting to see if a flock of heritage turkeys is practical to keep around free range and mostly self sustaining. I let this first turkey flock out only under my supervision. When they begin reproducing I’m going to turn loose about 20 of them when they are half grown to see if they will stick around. My concern is that they will leave when wild turkeys pass through the farm. If, however, I find that they won’t leave, they will be a good kind of self-sustaining poultry to raise.

I am wondering how did you free range turkey experiment go?

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I am wondering how did you free range turkey experiment go?

I just snapped this pic for you.

I started with 4; 3 hens and 1 gobbler. They all imprinted on me so the three hens would squat for me and the gobbler would try to fight me. I killed and butchered the gobbler. One of the three hens squatted under my truck wheel one morning so she ended up being butchered too. The two left both nested. One nested out in the blueberries and one nested between the barns. The one in the blueberries got picked off by a coyote around day 21.

The one that nested around the barn is still with me and free ranges like a champ. She hangs around the farmyard. She doesn’t forage further than a 100 yard radius from where she roosts. She eats very little feed. She probably gets a handful’s worth a day. Everything else is grass and insects.

I don’t see any other practical way to keep turkeys except to free range them so that they forage for most of their food. Otherwise the cost to feed them is too much.

I have 6 more mixed heritage turkeys growing out in a coop. They’re built way more like a wild turkey than my first batch was/is. I let them free range for a week and by the end of the week they were hanging out about 300 yards away from the homestead. So I gathered them back up and locked them in a coop until they get older. These fly much better than the bronze. They’re a mix of royal palm, bronze, and bourbon reds. Their legs and wings are longer and their bodies smaller and more athletic.

 

[SarahGfa]

Did the local wild turkeys try to breed your hens? I am trying to free range some heritage turkeys and they show up every morning with a gaggle of their wild buddies in tow. Two of my heritage turkeys were killed by predators but there are more and more wild ones that keep joining my "flock".

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Did the local wild turkeys try to breed your hens? I am trying to free range some heritage turkeys and they show up every morning with a gaggle of their wild buddies in tow. Two of my heritage turkeys were killed by predators but there are more and more wild ones that keep joining my "flock".

The wild turkeys never tried, much to my disappointment. In fact the wild turkeys avoided mine and visa versa. As where the wild turkeys like to intermingle with the guineas. My first group of turkeys and guineas hated each other and the remaining hen and the guineas don’t mix much notwithstanding them appearing in the above pic together.

 

[raingarden]

This is a great thread. Thank you for pulling it all together.

I thought you might be interested in this short Hawaii Public Radio piece. It is full of misinformation about RJF. The author claims that RJF can be distinguished from mixed breed feral chickens by their truncated call. However, they fail to recognize that real RJF have eclipse plumage, white earlobes, low tail carriage and such. It is highly unlikely or impossible that pure RJF still exist in Hawaii. Too much water has flowed under the bridge since the voyaging polynesians first bought RJF to Hawaii about 800 years ago. Nonetheless, there are a lot of feral chickens here that still look very similar to RJF and, in some cases, the flocks continue to revert to their ancestrial roots.

Anyway, the piece does have recordings of the truncated call of most Hawaii feral chickens.

https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/podcast/manu-minute/2021-09-16/manu-minute-a-good-moa-to-you

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Number 1 is my last Cracker broodcock on the farm. He killed all of the other cocks that I attempted to keep. Hei Hei is still alive on my brother’s farm. N1 turned 2 years old on Christmas day and Hei Hei will turn 3 this spring. Currently N1 cooped with various Cracker hens I rotate in and out and with two American game/game mixes. I’ll put him back out to free range when I get all of the pure Crackers and crosses I want off of him. I want to make an entire flock that he has fathered and then I may line breed back to him for several generations.

1 in 5 chicks N1 fathers is white. That’s between 4 different hens I’ve flock bred him with. Hei Hei never produced white but he did throw a pumpkin colored cock and a blonde hen in one brood.

 

[raingarden]

Your roosters have more white in the ear lobes than ours but they otherwise look the same.. That's a really nice looking hen in the background as well. I wish our hens looked like that instead of the blacktail buff. The blacktail buff is very stable, but it's not jungle fowl-like.

Now, I try to watch the transition to a new rooster. The goal is to intervein at the latest possible moment and remove the king to make way for his heir apparent. Long live the king.

One year when I wasn't paying attention they fought it out as usual. The king was killed and then the heir apparent died a week later from his injuries. There was then no rooster and it was total chaos for almost a month. Some hens drifted off to who-knows-where. I thought one of their young cockerels would eventually grow into the job. But before that could happen an older and larger cockerel that had probably been driven off from somewhere showed up to claim the flock of hens. Peace returned to the kingdom..

There are several other feral flocks on different properties within ear-shout of us. You can hear them staking out their territory every morning. From the looks of it, they are all related and inbred. It would be cool if they were all tagged and I could prowl around the neighborhood to figure out how they interact. A crazy old chicken man would not go over too well though.

 

[Az OEGB]

Does this cockerel look like your crackers

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I see differences. Most obvious is leg color. My Crackers always have dark legs except for the odd one that throws bright green legs. I’d have to see a bunch of different poses to judge his stance and build.

The only ones of mine that throw light colored legs sometimes are the AGBs, which are Crackers crossed to OEGB.