A century of Turkey talk 2000-2100.

[memphis]

Ralphie...have you guys heard from Coffee? When is she moving? When is Ginger leaving? Are you selling two of your slate hens? Are you going to try & get eggs from Porter before he leaves?

Feedman...what's going on with the house?



Chaos....how are the new turkeys doing?

 

[Chaos18]

Ralphie...have you guys heard from Coffee? When is she moving? When is Ginger leaving? Are you selling two of your slate hens? Are you going to try & get eggs from Porter before he leaves?

Feedman...what's going on with the house?



Chaos....how are the new turkeys doing?

I'm hopeing to move them out of quarantine this weekend. Hopefully T-Bone is ready for roommates.

 

[feistychick]

Peepers is cute!! What breed is it??

Papa hatched from an olive egg (that's all I know) and the egg looked like it could have been from my cochin (but I could be wrong). So definitely a mixed breed

 

[duluthralphie]

I think I can talk about it now..

Coffee did get the financing to buy the farm...

She got married on Tuesday. She announced it on the Surviving Minnesota thread, so I can say something now...

She will not be getting Porter for a couple months though. She is having a little bump in the road. She is seeing a surgeon today about some potential cancer issue. She has had it before so her spirits seem to be as well as can be expected during this.

I do not know if I will keep any Porter eggs right now. I am planning on getting rid of 2 Self Blue hens. I am making some "major" changes in my birds. (or planning them).

I am going to be getting rid of my Creamettes this spring (80% sure). They just do not live up to the hype. I think the climate here is not right for them. I know some people love theirs, but most of us up here are finding them lacking. I love the egg colors but I do not think they are cold hardy enough. Their combs are so susceptible to frost bite. (Roos not hens). The body mass is just not their for our cold. I think the stress of our cold puts a damper on their egg production.

I have those half breed rosters to keep the bright blue in my EE's. For being a bird of the same size the EE's just run circles around the CLB's.


I am going to put Sidekick in with the blue slates hens and maybe one self blue. Sidekick is a self blue. So I will not get any blacks from those match ups. Sidekick is everything a good Turkey should be, large good confirmation, from what I can tell, and he is purebred ( I know that is a badish word for turkeys). But it will give me my show birds.

I am going to put them in the Creamette coop, the creamettes are going to breeding pens. I will be putting Blackie and his 4 BA hens in with Sidekick so I can have good BA's also. I will be using artificial light in there to stimulate them.

That will leave JJ with 6 girls for building a Calico flock. Of course, this will depend on my talking Ethel out of leaving the chicken coop and moving back in with the turkeys. She seems to think the chicken coop is her home now. I worry Ethel might start laying eggs though as the chicken coop has artificial light.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

I candled my turkey eggs due to hatch next week. It looks I still have 14 strong, developing poults inside which means my cabinet incubator is running like it should and Adam did a good job. I tried candling the 37 eggs that I set about 8 days ago but only a couple were obvious. I'm going to have to wait at least another week before I seriously check them.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

All you experts! Are turkeys known to how their eggs when planning to go broody? I was thinking that I wasn't getting eggs because of the cold but I just happened to catch Pebbles in the act of hiding eggs! I thought that I had a good egg day and saw her there too so I figured she was getting ready to lay hers. I left for a while to give her some privacy and when I came back, the eggs were hidden, buried under the shavings! I took them all since it's too cold to let them sit until she's ready to try but there were 7 there which is at least two days worth.

 

[Chaos18]

All you experts! Are turkeys known to how their eggs when planning to go broody? I was thinking that I wasn't getting eggs because of the cold but I just happened to catch Pebbles in the act of hiding eggs! I thought that I had a good egg day and saw her there too so I figured she was getting ready to lay hers. I left for a while to give her some privacy and when I came back, the eggs were hidden, buried under the shavings! I took them all since it's too cold to let them sit until she's ready to try but there were 7 there which is at least two days worth.

Maybe they are on to you and your plans for there children.

 

[duluthralphie]

Most of my turkeys cover their eggs every time they lay one. And they can tell the fake eggs too, they roll them out of the nest.

 

[R2elk]

This is what showed up today.



She looks like she has a lot of Narragansett in her.

The owner showed up today and picked up his missing bird. She does come from either a Narragansett or part Narragansett hen that was bred by a Red Bronze tom which means that she probably does have some Bourbon Red in her.

He also took my 3 1/2 year old Self Blue tom with him. He was totally free range and not fed by me this past summer. He dressed out at 18 1/2 lbs. after the removal of many lbs. of pure fat. He has at least an 1/8" layer of fat under his skin and was so greasy after being cleaned that it was impossible to hold onto the carcass. I know he ate a multitude of russian olives.

 

[memphis]

Geez....so Coffee buys a farm, gets married and finds out she has cancer. Wow. No wonder she hasn't checked in lately. Wow, that's a lot going on.

Coffee...keep us posted when you can. Congrats on getting married!