Stella's Social Club

[The Sheriff]

Oh Linda I am so sorry. Cook him now, and freeze the broth for gravy on Thanksgiving. Easy for me to say, right?

 

[The Sheriff]

Kelly, molting is already underway here, at least juvenile molting. Those white olive eggers have trashed their run and the ones on either side of them. I need to rake.

 

[The Sheriff]

My new avatar pic looks like my favorite emoticon.

 

[1muttsfan]

Linda, sorry to hear about your Tom - sounds like he is not suited to a mixed flock. Hope the well test goes great at the future Rooster Ranch.

Two dozen Swedish flower hen eggs went under two broodies on Thursday, fingers are now tightly crossed.

 

[mlm Mike]

Can anyone with turkeys tell me WTH would make a turkey stomp a chicken to death?!?

Sarge, my MW tom has never liked a couple of my senior hens. He will chase them for ten or fifteen feet some times. This evening I heard the turkey "I'm not happy" call, so I go check to see which gander is chasing Sarge (neither Angus nor Caleb likes Sarge and the feeling is mutual) and whether I need to break them up or not.

He was totally covering his victim, wings curled completely around to shield the view as if he were mounting a (turkey) hen, but he's usually silent during those interludes and just stands there for quite a while before committing the act. I have always felt very sorry for turkey hens, more so than chicken hens, because at least the roosters are done in seconds.

Anyway, Sarge was stomping and keening, so I got closer only to discover he was stomping the carcass of one of my hatchery Delaware hens. I don't know how the heck he caught her, they were in a fairly open area. Or how he got her down.

I am just dumbfounded.

I'm sorry.
I had a MW tom do that to one of my Icelandic hens this spring. We quickly through together some dog kennel panels and moved all the turkeys into it, and made an appointment with the executioner processor. No more turkeys here. Well there is one, but he won't be over wintered.

 

[chiqita]

That sound like he thought she got interested. That is all mating behavior.

 

[speckledhen]

Mating behavior or not, no hen should die from being mated, so turkeys and chickens sometimes just cannot run together. Even a rooster who is too rough on his own hens to the point of badly injuring or killing them is one who may need a different living arrangement. I know I wouldn't tolerate a rooster who was that rough on them, though I do realize that chicken mating behavior can seem a tad barbaric to some uninitiated folks. When my BR rooster, Hawkeye, died, I did not put my 14 lb Blue Orpington in the main flock, though I dearly wanted to do so, mainly because I had too many smaller bodied hens (5 lbs, some of them) and was concerned for their well-being. Seems that tom turkeys may just not be a good thing around chicken hens. So sorry for your hen, Linda.

 

[drumstick diva]

I was thinking the same thing - maybe he was trying to breed the hen and killed her. I know turkeys don't think like people. But, I would think that was his supreme dominance over hen that he didn't like. In humans they call it r*pe and it's not about s*x

 

[1muttsfan]

Any rooster here that can not treat his ladies with respect gets different living arrangements too, involving a plucker, a freezer and a crockpot.

 

[gryeyes]

I wish I had seen it START, not only so I could have stopped him, but I might have figured out what triggered it. And how he got her down, too.... As the chickens have always quick on their feet, unlike Sarge. He's been a puppy-dog of a turkey. (Although he did flog HHAndbasket once, but she was hesitant around him, demonstrating fear. After Sarge's daddy was loaned to her for a while, she stopped acting afraid of my tom when she visited here and he never tried it again.)

Melissa, my MW hen, has gone semi-broody in the coop. (She gets off her nest more than I have seen chicken hens leave their eggs when they're broody.) Even she can "say NO" to Sarge when he's thinking he might stand on her back for a while.

I wasn't going to move any white or mostly white fowl to the new property for a while, but I may make an exception in Sarge's case. I dunno.