A century of Turkey talk 2000-2100.

[memphis]

X2 babychick7.

 

[memphis]

Boy am i looking forward to this weeken! Its suposed to cool off. Plus its a three day weekend. Now that i can use my arm im looking forward to playing catch up in the yard!!

My girls are growing new feathers. Daisy fades to a silvery grey during the summer. Always surprises me how much darker her new feathers are. They are a darker blue grey. And her spots are alway different. And Annie is a much darker red. So pretty! Of course my Speckled Sussex will have different white dots causing me to look twice to tell them apert.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

My 5 daily escapees are getting more brave. I went outside earlier and didn't even know they were out. They were around the side of the house by the garden. I think they heard me talking to the chickens and they came flying, literally, back around. They really are beautiful flying Seriously though, I'm going to have to get some bird netting to keep them in before they start invading the neighbor's yard lol.

 

[memphis]

Rotten kids!: . I had problems getting my girls to bed tonight. Got the chickens in their coop. Usually i hang with the turkeys for a bit. They go to bed later than the chickens. )And they sleep in later.) They usually follow me to their coop. Tonight they stood around staring at me. It turned into ring around the coop. No idea what the heck was going through their beady little brains! It was a coordinated act of civil disobedience on their part!

 

[duluthralphie]

Rotten kids!: . I had problems getting my girls to bed tonight. Got the chickens in their coop. Usually i hang with the turkeys for a bit. They go to bed later than the chickens. )And they sleep in later.) They usually follow me to their coop. Tonight they stood around staring at me. It turned into ring around the coop. No idea what the heck was going through their beady little brains! It was a coordinated act of civil disobedience on their part!

My turkeys walked right in, even though I sent them to bed earlier than normal.

I put my turkeys to bed before the chickens.





Speaking of "turkeys going to bed". I put the Porter Gang to bed around 2pm. I needed to go to the hospital and did not want them out when I was not home. I took a video of the round up. However, I do not have internet yet, I am forced to use the hotspot on IPhone.

I tried twice to upload it. It refused to complete on the limited connection. I will try as soon as I get internet back. I have 16 teems from the porter eggs. so I have 2/3rds of them.

1 white
3 bronze
1 red
2-3 blacks

The rest royal palms.


The video will show you two future PITA's, A Black and a red.... Ginger and Penguin seem to have returned!

 

[duluthralphie]

I had to put a new sewer system in at my Mothers house. We have two houses on this farmstead. They are a couple hundred feet apart.

This morning an electrician came to hook up the lift pump. ( Minnesota law will not let me even wire the ends together because my Mom "rents" from me and it is a rental house.)


The electrician was freaked out a tad, he had 8 turkeys standing around watching him work. With the Toms running around him having a snood pulling contest...

 

[feistychick]

I had to put a new sewer system in at my Mothers house. We have two houses on this farmstead. They are a  couple hundred feet apart.

This morning an electrician came to hook up the lift pump. ( Minnesota law will not let me even wire the ends together because my  Mom "rents" from me and it is a rental house.)


The electrician was freaked out a tad, he had 8 turkeys standing around watching him work. With the Toms running around him having a snood pulling contest...

I can just imagine the curiosity turkeys would have about the electrician and what he was doing - anything out of the ordinary is cause for extreme investigation!

 

[gpeters3]

I have chickens and turkeys together and the chickens appear to be attacking the turkeys. I have 3 toms and one hen and the hen lays down to protect herself but the toms are too proud to sit and too aloof to fight apparently. The chickens have completely denuded their butts and one has a very deep wound which I presume is due to the chickens actually eating it's flesh. Can these toms be butchered safely? I'm going to take them to a processer because I don't have a scalding pot large enough for them and don't want to build a funnel that large either. The denuding is not likely a threat but the one wound is deep and may have some infection in it.

I had a rooster for a while but I have a no-rooster rule so he is gone now but I wonder if he may have started the carnage? If this is going to be a common problem with them I will simply eliminate the turkeys and keep just the chickens. My wife wanted some turkey eggs but the stores don't sex them like the chickens so we got toms instead of hens. The hen seems to be healthy and not bothered yet and she is friendly and eats out of my hand and lets me pick her up so I'll keep her as a pet. The toms are skittish. They are funny to watch. When one gobbles they all gobble together except the hen. She has her own language.

 

[duluthralphie]

I have chickens and turkeys together and the chickens appear to be attacking the turkeys. I have 3 toms and one hen and the hen lays down to protect herself but the toms are too proud to sit and too aloof to fight apparently. The chickens have completely denuded their butts and one has a very deep wound which I presume is due to the chickens actually eating it's flesh. Can these toms be butchered safely? I'm going to take them to a processer because I don't have a scalding pot large enough for them and don't want to build a funnel that large either. The denuding is not likely a threat but the one wound is deep and may have some infection in it.

I had a rooster for a while but I have a no-rooster rule so he is gone now but I wonder if he may have started the carnage? If this is going to be a common problem with them I will simply eliminate the turkeys and keep just the chickens. My wife wanted some turkey eggs but the stores don't sex them like the chickens so we got toms instead of hens. The hen seems to be healthy and not bothered yet and she is friendly and eats out of my hand and lets me pick her up so I'll keep her as a pet. The toms are skittish. They are funny to watch. When one gobbles they all gobble together except the hen. She has her own language.

Pecking orders as you know can be complicated. I have Turkeys, Guineas and chickens I have 4-5 pecking orders and they are all interwoven in a manner us humans may never fully understand.

The Toms have a pecking order,
the Turkeys hens have a pecking order,
Turkeys in general have a pecking order

Roosters have a pecking order
Hens have a pecking order
Chickens in general..

Same for guineas.

Then we have the Rooster/Tom order.

Mine fight a lot. I am never sure who wins. It appears here like my Tom JJ is the Alpha male, thus he is challenged often. He does not take much poop from anyone. However, I can see him visibly aging, and there is a young one that is constantly testing JJ, Luckily Sidekick intervenes as JJ has assigned Sidekick the task of taking care of the light work.


This does not hold with the Roosters. JJ is forced to defend himself against King George often. The other roosters fall in somewhere below those two on the overall pecking order. King George is not really the head rooster though. The rooster have regions they rule, Sven rules the area around the coop, BUT Sven and King George sleep in the same coop. King George rules the area to the west of the house and south to the CLB coop. Ed rules the brooder shed/coop and that area. Ed does not sleep in the coop, he sleeps with his wife Edna and the adopted Baby Guineas. Ed and Edna wanted kids so much they adopted a family of gangsters.


Currently I have no Guinea males so they are out of the loop. The last two male guineas died as the result ofa botched highway robbery of a grain truck. Violent death is the way of the guinea ghetto.

There is not much you can do for the pecking order. I would suggest you use "swat" or Udder balm on the cut to try and keep it from getting infected and to stop further injury. Swat is a fly deterrent and the tom will not get maggots. Udder balm is simply wool fat lanolin and perfectly safe to the meat. I am not sure about swat and the meat.

When are you planning to butcher? How old and large is the turkey? Turkeys are very easy to pluck the feathers on. I found for 10 bucks a craigslist a 55 gallon steel drum/barrel to scald in. I use a propane torch to heat it and an electric probe heater to keep it hot. Cheap and easy.


Good luck on whatever you decide!

 

[duluthralphie]

Here is the video of the Porter bunch,,,,

Find the potential PITA's.