Take Joy!

Something is where it doesn't belong . . .

Emily and the five adolescent turkeys that survived. (out of 16! from what I read and hear, though, that's not unusual; they have a pretty high mortality rate unless you coddle them, and we didn't these. Since they were born outside and we hadn't been trying to hatch any, we let Emily take care of them as she would. And we have a semi-resident hawk.)

 

They have taken to flying out of the chicken lot early in the morning and browsing about the yard. Here they're under the bird feeder tree in the side yard eating up spilled birdseed, which is fine with me. In the evening when John goes down to feed and gather eggs, they all come back to be let in the gate. (These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago; after many days of no rain whatsoever, things don't look nearly so lush any more.)

 

There are three hens (all brown) and two toms, one brown one and one colored like Emily. (He goes by the name of Dummy, since he's the one who is always stuck on the wrong side of some fence and unable either to remember that he flew over and could therefore fly back, or to find the open gate not five feet in front of him. The others have no names.)

NOTE: Ysabeau has an appointment at the Humane Alliance Spay-Neuter clinic on Monday. Only $50, and they'll give her a rabies shot too (I'm sure she hasn't had one, and they require proof or they give the shot themselves.) for another $10, and that will put her in line to get a 3-year shot next year with everyone else. Unfortunately, we have to have her there at 8 am, and it's across town which will require leaving at 7:15 or so, which will require getting up about 5:30 in order to deal with everyone else . . . and there's the matter of no food or water after midnight, so I will have to pick up ALL the bowls and EVERYONE will be highly insulted . . . but it's only temporary and they will all survive, even though they may not think so. And then we wait for Pixie to get old enough.

At least HE won't go into heat . . . 

And I'll be able to open the windows! Ysabeau has chewed holes in one screen door and two window screens, so we've had to just close them all. And there's all that lovely fall weather outside!

She may not appreciate what's going to happen to her, but I certainly will, after nearly a week of clinging to my skirts and  yowling plaintively. She even approached Sam last night, writhing seductively on the floor in front of him and murmuring sweet nothings in his direction.

He went to sleep.

So did she. . . eventually.

Look! Little Turkeys!

Turkey Haven: a wooded strip at the side of the garden. We fenced it off (with plastic netting; the illusion of a barrier seems to be enough to keep the birds in) for the chickens and turkeys. Last year we let them free-range in the goat lot, but we had trouble with predators and chickens who laid eggs where we couldn't find them, thus luring other predators . . . so they are confined this summer to both chicken lots and this strip, which supplies infinite numbers of bugs and whatnot. There's Emily with a couple of her poults, hotfooting it out of camera range.

 

Little turkeys on the brush pile, where they like to sun in the afternoons. I was hoping for a picture of all seven, but had no luck.

 

And here we have Emily and her brood (the others are in the potato vines, happily eating bugs) in the lower garden. Periodically they slip under the netting and forage among the potatoes, and she flies over the fence to keep and eye on them. When one of us shows up, she goes to the gate and waits to be let back into the lot.

The other poults (watched over with an eagle eye by Ada and the brown hen, whom I suppose I must now name), are further up in the wooded strip, and they stay there. NO photo ops, please! They're about a week, week and a half behind Emily's. I assume they will emerge as they grow.

We interrupt our semi-regular Friday Catblogging to bring you . . .

Baby Turkeys!

 

Emily and her family—there are ten of them in all, though I could never manage a photo with all of them in it. They're three days old now.

 

One turkey hen is setting on a next under the chicken house; the other is setting inside the house. Apparently neither one of them will hatch anything, since it's way past time. Emily, however, laid her eggs down in the bushes and trees at the end of the garden, where we didn't know anything about it. Until a couple of days ago . . . she had fourteen eggs, and these ten hatched. (And I'll bet you that at least half of them are toms, including the one that took a go at one of the hens this afternoon.)

 

Maybe we can give people turkeys for Christmas . . .

Autumn Down In The Back Lot

The leaves are beginning to fall. The quality of the light is changing. And, now that we've had a bit of rain, there is some green down at the bottom of the hill. (Not that the goats care—they're happily munching dried leaves all up and down the lot. But the free-ranging chickens are eating it up.) The days are shorter, and we've put a low-wattage bulb in the chicken house to extend the day and keep the hens laying a while longer. We've checked out the persimmon tree at John's mother's house, and it's loaded . . . I see a persimmon pudding (or several) in the future! The fall garden is coming up; there will be mustard greens for all and sundry. (I hate mustard greens, but they grow well here, they're full of vitamins and John loves them, so I suppose I'll learn to like them. Someday.) It's time for me to get back out in the garden and be pulling up weeds for the chickens, or it will be if it ever cools off again—the humidity is about 112% the past couple of days, and it's back up in the high 80's. Ick.

Grandchildren visited yesterday—Karolyn brought Riley and Eliza up to visit before they all move to Florida at the end of the month. (Yes, I think it's an idiotic move, but no one asked for my opinion. Fancy that.) With the price of gas and whatnot, it will most likely be Christmas before we see them again (if we're lucky. I'm pessimistic these days.), and we needed to measure everyone for their upcoming Halloween costumes—Riley will be Spiderman and Eliza will be Wonder Woman. (And Emma will be a butterfly, but I am still thinking about that one.) I'm going to miss them; Eliza is old enough, at six, to spend a week here in the summer when school is out, but the arrangement her mother and father have worked out to allow them to move out of state has no time allotted for her to come up here. She and I had both looked forward to my teaching her to sew, and letting her help me make her a simple skirt or two. Ah, well. As used to be said, what can't be cured must be endured. She can write (she helped me write down their measurements in my little book)—perhaps I can set her up an email account and we can write back and forth.

We fed animals and dug potatoes (Riley's very good at basketing potatoes), and Eliza modeled her lion and clown costumes for my camera. Pictures will be posted (hopefully) tomorrow, when I get them out of the camera and dealt with.

Sunday Morning Gathering

In the Briar Patch

I went down to the bottom of the woodlot this afternoon, looking for baby turkeys. Small (who is named that because she's, well, small . . . smaller than the other turkeys, anyway. I wasn't feeling terribly original that day, obviously.) had been setting, and last week we both saw her with one of the other turkey hens and three baby chicks.

We've seen her and other hen a couple of times since then, but not the chicks.  I've heard them peeping, but not seen them. So I was looking to see whether I could spot the place she's got them hidden. And they are definitely hidden—you wouldn't think a white turkey could hide quite so well, but she can. There are a lot of clumps of honeysuckle and wild rose down here, and some of them are pretty thick.

Like this one:

See anything in there? I thought not. Neither did I, until I'd gone past it a couple of times. Then I happened to look in just the proper fashion, and, lo and behold:

See that? That patchy brown thing in the middle of the shadow underneath? (You will probably have to click for the big picture; I did, and I know what to look for!)

That, my friend, is a setting turkey. Lucrezia, I believe; I was too busy pretending to look elsewhere to get a very good look.

So one of these first days we'll have more baby turkeys, I hope, and perhaps we may even be able to see them . . . if their mother lets them out of hiding before they grow up.

Turkey Games

Here are the turkeys (mostly the young ones; I can't very well call them "little turkeys" any more), devouring tomatoes. We have an agreement with Manna to relieve them of whatever produce they can't use, and we feed it to the various livestock (goats are very fond of squash and cucumbers but don't like tomatoes; geese love cucumbers; chickens and turkeys, on the other hand, will eat just about anything that can't escape, and some things that could if they moved faster) or, if it's too far gone, plow it into the garden as almost-compost. 

And here we have turkeys playing "My tomato is better than your tomato." One grabs a tomato and runs away with it while all the others chase him . . . it doesn't take much to amuse a turkey.

New Young Things

Look what I have now!

They're nine weeks old (more or less); these are from the eggs that Howard hatched for me (he has an incubator, and I not only don't, I don't have any place to put it if I did). As you can see, Evander had a hand (so to speak) in some of these . . . the eggs were all laid by Lucrezia, the dark brown hen. I don't think any of the others were old enough to be laying yet.

This single poult is an oddity: there are fifteen of them, and they don't go anywhere separately! For their first couple of days outside, they were madly upset if one of them got lost separated from the pack, and they wouldn't go out in the yard at all; they just hung out under the old chickenhouse, ignoring mama's calls to come out. Now, though, they are roaming all over the garden just like big turkeys. . . but still in a pack!

And here is the other thing I almost have: baby goats! As you can see, Mona is veryvery pregnant; in fact, I'd bet on this weekend (full moon on Saturday, after all) if not before. She has that wild-eyed, madly uncomfortable look that I remember well . . .

And I'd bet on twins again, too.

Poultry-Related Miscellany

Evander and Lyle have departed for parts unknown . . . actually, I know where they have probably gone, but it doesn't pay to inquire too closely into the fate of male poultry. We sent them both to the sale last night, and the two of them brought $75. Fat and sassy: Evander probably weighed 35 pounds, and Lyle was within 5 pounds or so of him.

I will miss watching them, but they were both feeling their oats, and it's a lot calmer down in the chickenlot now that they're gone. And the price they brought will pay nicely for the 14 hens I bought from Leroy the other day, so I am out no cash; always a good thing. They are ready to begin laying any time now, if it will ever warm up a bit, and a couple of them appear to be the sort that lays colored eggs.

He also gave me these two:

They're Silkies. We think they're roosters. We never see one without the other, and they don't go into the chickenhouse at night; I believe they must sleep under it with the turkey hen and the geese. They are loads of fun to watch; they look like teddy bears, or llamas with only two legs. I shall be interested to see whether they develop actual tails, or just that mop of feathers. . .

No eggs much this week; it's too cold. Barely above freezing even in mid-afternoon. I'm having to tote buckets of hot water out to everyone's water troughs in the morning, so it will stay thawed after I break the ice. It's supposed to warm up a little next week, and I'm ready! I like cold weather better when I don't have to go out in it at seven o'clock in the morning.

See that ice? Every blasted morning this week! This morning it was either 4° or 18°, depending on whether you checked the thermometer on the front porch (sheltered) or the one outside the kitchen window (north side, exposed to wind).

On the other hand, the sky's been blue and clear as a bell, absolutely gorgeous! And I've been working at my counter so I can look out the window and watch chickens eating cucumbers, eggplant, and bread crumbs (plus their regular feed, but it's nice that they have some fresh stuff in the dead of winter).

Guineas in the morning, hunkered down under a tree at the end of the garden:

They seem to be slowed down a bit in the cold, so I actually got a picture of them that isn't blurry!

Evander, Guard Turkey

Here is my self-appointed bodyguard, Evander:

Either that, or he thinks I am some sort of gigantic turkey hen and has claimed me for his own. . . in any case, he follows me about whenever I'm in the chickenlot. He demands to be fed from the corn bucket—I used to handfeed him, but since he's gotten larger he jabs my hand and it hurts, so I can only handfeed him with gloves on, and he seems to be frightened of gloves for some reason. Poor baby, having to eat from the ground with everyone else! He follows me into the chicken house when I gather eggs. He watches me whenever I'm outside . . . I have a feathered stalker!

When he's displaying, he resembles a giant ambulatory pinecone:

I have found a way to make him leave me alone . . . reach out as if I'm going to grab him while wearing my garden gloves. He flees—at least several feet—and begins eating to preserve his dignity. (You know how cats do that "I wasn't really going to attack your foot; I was just washing" thing? Like that.)

Never a dull moment . . .