Growing Turkeys

The turkeys are growing so fast sometimes I think they look bigger every morning. 

We started with getting Luca used to the turkeys.  

Every morning and evening they go out so they can stretch their wings, run, and forage for food. 

When we got Oakley we started working with her right away to train her to not chase the turkeys. 

Unfortunately we had two wild chickens that I didn’t train Oakley with.  I thought I had trained her to turkeys she would accept the chickens…. 

1) Livestock Guardian Dogs are not supposed to be considered trustworthy until they are 2 years old 

2) I didn’t think about how Oakley would respond when the chicken started stealing the turkey’s food 

3) Livestock Guardian’s are supposed to be introduced to animals that are accepted on the property.  

We no longer have wild chickens.  Totally my fault! 

 Oakley is amazing with the turkeys. 

She will watch the turkeys run, flap wings, even chase her and she has not acted aggressive at all.

Teen Son will be selling 5 of the turkeys for Thanksgiving.  That will be a whole new adventure.

Turkeys

Teen Son bought some Broad Breasted White Turkeys and we bought 6 Red Bourbon Turkeys.  So far 3 of the Red Bourbon’s have died.

  We have been working on getting Luca used to the turkeys so they will be protected instead of chased by our dog.  Luca isn’t real happy with the playful turkeys 

Butching Turkeys

Warning:

don't scroll down unless you want to see dead birds.

When we were at the fair Teen Son’s Ag teacher mentioned the person who had butchered the turkeys in the past was no longer available.  Teen Son found out it was $25  a bird to do the butchering and volunteered.  The problem is we are not real confident of the job we are doing!  So he gathered three friends, borrowed the pot a wonderful friend of ours uses to cook crawfish and got to work.  Well the kids got to work – I took pictures. 

 

The boys put the birds in a cut down traffic cone then cut the veins so the bird would bleed out.

 

One of the FFA girls older sisters knew what she was doing and gave lessons. 

 She sure did make the day so much easier!

They started doing the plucking with a plucker attached to a drill.  

These birds were 25 to 40 lbs and holding them in the air got old really fast.

 

The kids switched over to plucking by hand.

 

Posers!

 

Not to be out done by his big brother.

The first bird gook over 40 minutes and by the time we got down to the fourth turkey the kids had it down to 25 minutes.  4 kids working 25 minutes to earn $25.00 is not a great profit.  Teen son enjoyed doing the work and plans to raise a few turkeys to sell for Thanksgiving.  

April Fools Day

I have a friend who’s family does April Fool’s Day right.  In my family we may say a few jokes but that is is.  My friend has 2 adult sons.  One of her son’s has his yard and home that everything is perfect in.  She and her other son bought 3 rabbits and painted their backs with 1, 2, and 4.   Her son called his mom in a panic he had caught 3 rabbits but couldn’t find #3. 

She bought 2 turkey babies and put them in her boyfriends office.  Her boyfriend is willing to keep either the rabbits or the turkeys not both.  She called me to see if we would take her turkeys.  Hmm will I?....

Of Course!

Sadly one of the turkeys died before we got it.  She brought over the turkey, a huge dog crate to keep it in, lots of baby turkey food.  We named it Butterball.  We think it is a Broad Breasted White.  It spent it’s first few days here in a large dog crate.  Then we started letting it out for short periods of time with our birds thinking it would be happy to hang out with our chickens that are about it’s size.  Butterball has no interest in the chickens but he/she is in LOVE with Tomas.  

The first time we let it out Tomas spent 30 minutes trying to herd Butterball back into it’s crate when Tomas realized it wouldn’t go in the crate he just started protecting it from the other birds. 

We have been letting Butterball out whenever we are out with the animals so we can hear if there is a problem.  He likes the turkey hens and when they are taking dirt baths he will go up and run his beak through their feathers.  Yesterday Teen Son forgot to put Butterball away when he was tired of watching him.  We were busy and left home for several hours and Butterball was healthy and happy when we got home to put the animals away.  Butterball will now be a free range bird with the rest of them and only spend nights in the dog crate.