My turkey died today :o(

[jossanne]

I was given 5 nearly-grown turkeys last month. A male royal palm, a male standard bronze, and 3 standard bronze females. The guy gave them to me because his dog had been killing his birds, so he sent them to my house to keep them from being eaten by his dogs. The male bronze and one of the female bronze had both survived attacks by his dogs, and came to me recovering. I weighed the bronze jake, Hawkeye, last week, and he was 26 pounds at about 5 months.

Last weekend, I noticed Hawkeye was limping on his left leg. He still had scabs on his back, and a droopy right wing, but he seemed to be okay other than the limp. After a couple of days, he went down and refused to get up. He was in a shady spot, and I kept feed and water with him at all times. He moved to a different shady spot a couple of days ago, and never got up again. With him down, I was able to examine him more closely than I had yet, and I noticed that his right wing had a bone sticking through the skin at the "elbow" joint.

I'm assuming he died of infection from his dog wounds. I didn't even think of giving him antibiotics until it was too late. I've had chickens recover from dog attacks with just time, clean water and plenty of food. Now I feel terrible that I didn't do more for him.

Poor Hawkeye the turkey!

 

[QuailKeeper]

r.i.p. hawkeye

 

[aceriderbetty]

I'm sorry for your loss. It sounds to me like you did plenty for him and made him comfortable. Please don't second guess yourself, because you did your best.

 

[jossanne]

So is it worth it to keep the royal palm jake with the standard bronze girls, to breed turkeys for meat? I want heritage turkeys so that we have turkeys to butcher every year. I had planned to find the RP a different home so that I'd have just the bronzes breeding...

But now should I keep him, since he and the girls are comfortable together? Would it be relatively easy to get another bronze tom to fit into this group, minus the RP? What to do?

 

[b.hromada]

I'm very sorry you lost Hawkeye.

You didn't realize how bad it was, it wasn't intentional. At least you have the others, which otherwise would have been killed by his dogs.

 

[QuailKeeper]

i would keep the royal palm. they are really pretty full grown, you'll gat neat chick crosses from her and the jake, and it will be better for the other hens health to have another hen to divert the tom's attention

 

[Crickett]

I'm very sorry for your loss

As for the other question, I'd go ahead and keep the RP. You should still be able to have some good sized turkeys from the mix, they just wont be show quailty. Still good for eating though, if that's what you want.

 

[chickensioux]

So sorry about Hawkeye.

 

[jossanne]

Thanks all for feeling bad for me. I'll hang onto King Henry then. He is a pretty thing...

 

[BluegrassSeramas]