Our First Hatch!

[thaiturkey]

Thank you.

We are having fun learning.

I was hesitant at first to leave them outside over night. Temperatures can drop very quickly if a storm gets up. When I saw how they gathered under mum's feathers as the day cooled down I decided that it was worth trying. We just put some flattened cardboard boxes around to keep any direct breeze off them.

In this pic. are the two hens that later had their offspring put into care. The brown one is the dog fighter - you can just see where feathers are missing from her back. I didn't know it at the time but they are enticing the chicks out of the coop prior to leading them to the rear fence to look for a route into the jungle.

 

[thaiturkey]

Last night we had our first loss, one of the chicks. Soon after it hatched, about three weeks ago, the others started to peck it. We took it inside overnight and returned it to the others the next day. There were no more attacks but on two or three occasions it sat all day doing nothing. Yesterday it looked very poorly and was brought in for the night. Today was to be decision day but it worsened last evening and was dead this morning.

There were no signs of injury or disease but, despite looking the same as the others, it was just skin and bone to the touch.

Yet another learning curve for a newbie.