Butterball the Turkey...

Hmmm, where do I start?  Well let's start at the very beginning.  Whippersnapper wanted a farm project of his very own.  His brother had the pigs, his sister does the main care for the horses we board here as well as part of the garden responsibilities, his other brother has the meat chickens and the laying hens, and he really wanted his own venture.  We did a little research (I emphasize a little research) and decided maybe turkeys would be a good idea.  We like turkey meat, turkeys are supposedly friendly and personable so we wanted try turkeys for his project.

We researched more and more and learned that turkeys are a little finicky as chicks and require....er maybe more-so demand a lot of care early on.  It has been said they just look for new ways to die.

Undaunted by all this research, we decided to order 12 turkeys from a hatchery we've had good luck with in the past for chickens.  During the ordering process there was a memo area where it said you could place the date you wanted them to arrive.  So I entered April 9th as the desired arrival week.  The next morning I checked my email inbox and I had an order confirmation and it stated they were scheduled to ship the week of April 9th.  Perfect!  We had a plan, a schedule that was finely tuned.  We were to also get a new batch of cornish-cross chicks that same week in April the turkeys were to arrive.  We planned to brood the two together and raise them together so we wouldn't need additional feeders, heat lamps, etc.  I know people say not to raise turkeys and chickens together, but we have also read where some people do it successfully.  We were determined to try it and fly in the face of conventional knowledge, while accepting the risks along the way.

On March 27th, I received a phone call, on the line I heard something along the lines of this: "Hi, I am calling to let you know we have your chicks for you at the post office.  You can come pick them up."  I hung up confused and alarmed, I wasn't supposed to get any chicks for a couple weeks yet!  So I hurried to town and got to the post office while the older kids stayed home to prepare a brooder in the wire dog crate with a heat lamp and cardboard sides to prevent drafts.  It sure is nice having capable kids you can count on! 

When I got to the post office the clerk and I peeked into the box and we could tell right away it wasn't good.  There were some noticeably dead and others were not looking good.  I got them home quickly, and we had the heat jacked up on high and the humans in the car about died of heat stroke on the ride home, but we knew the chicks needed heat (90-95 degrees for the first week) so we tried to get them warm as soon as possible.  

Once home, we started to take them from the box carefully.  It was disturbing, but we tried to focus on the task at hand, which was to hydrate these babies ASAP and warm them up.  We dipped beaks but some were too weak even for that, so we took a small dropper and started dripping as best we could to get water into them.  Some looked like they might make it after a couple hours.  Some died fairly quickly.  All day it was a somber process of trying our best to hydrate and care for these babies.  By nightfall there was only 4 turkeys alive.  They looked like they might make it!  I had hope for a few alive in the morning.

In the morning we awoke at 4 a.m. to a loud chirping noise.  We both commented how that was a good sign, but at 4 a.m. we weren't quite ready to be awake and go check on them.  After about 5 mins of us talking in bed, we noticed the chirping was getting closer and closer!  We sat up in bed to find a lone turkey chirping at Mr. Wonderful's side of the bed.  He had somehow gotten out of the small box that we placed inside the wire dog crate and had run into our room and said "Hello" with his chirping. He narrowly missed the advances of 2 wide-eyed cats looking for a meal!  We discovered why he was seeking our company when we got out of bed to place him back into his brooder box.  All his buddies had died in the night.  We have heard turkeys are sociable, and we think that once he heard our voices he came running.  Awwwww.  

Now that the turkey was alone he seemed sad, but healthy, so we were determined to help him not feel so lonely.  We placed a mirror in there with him to give him the feel of having company, ok so really we were trying to pull one over on him, but it kinda worked.

All alone and so sad....he stares longingly in the mirror.

He spent all his time sitting in front of that mirror snuggled with his reflection.  Then when he would walk around he spent his time pacing in front of the mirror trying to get to the other bird in the mirror.  We thought he might go crazy pacing all day, and it was heartbreaking to watch.  So we broke down and got him some company.  We went to town and bought 3 Rhode Island Red chicks.

He appreciated the company so much, he snuggled right in with them.  We even caught him with his wings spread out a little over them like he was hugging them.

He is a funny little guy, he falls asleep much like an active toddler.  We found him one day sitting on the thermometer and his head down sound asleep!  He woke right up and started eating right after this picture was taken.  It reminds me of how as a parent with a newborn you have to check to see if they are still breathing sometimes.

Top view of him sleeping on the thermometer.

He pals around with his chicken buddies and seems to be doing well.

Since it looks like he will be around for a while we decided to name him Butterball.  The name suggestion came from my dad.

This week we had to add 2 of the meat chickens in the brooder pen inside the house because they have leg injuries.    The turkey has really taken to them, although at first the turkey tried to jump ship because those cornish-cross chickens looked like freaks of nature to him.  Well I am guessing at what he was thinking, but I am pretty sure I am accurate in reading his mind/actions.

The Rest of the Story...

After calling the hatchery we realized they had made a mistake on their end.  They still had our shipment scheduled for the week of April 9th.  We talked about it a while and decided it was likely it would again take 3 days in the mail for them to get to our house due to the distance they had to be shipped.  We we didn't want the chance of going through that again, watching so many suffer, so we canceled the order.  

We decided that if turkeys need such strict brooder care and they don't do well with the mail shipment like chickens do, we'd try hatching them out ourselves.  I ordered 24 hatching eggs from a hatchery in California.  We figure with 80% ending up being fertile eggs, 70% of those might hatch for us, and figure in another 15% mortality rate, and round down a couple and we might end up with 10 healthy turkeys.  We are figuring low on this because we don't want to be disappointed.  I hope to beat this figure with better survival rates, but I don't want to be presumptuous either.  So we will figure low and hopefully be pleasantly surprised.  We have all the equipment to hatch them out.  We have a nice incubator, and a hatching unit I made years ago from a cooler and a light on a dimmer switch.   We had great hatch rates with chickens so maybe we will do well with turkeys too. 

So because they didn't charge us for the turkey shipment, we've ended up with a free turkey essentially, right?   Not exactly, after purchasing shiny things from the Dollar Store for water and feed dish to attract them to eat better,  3 chicks to keep him company, and a small waterer and feeder because he couldn't be with the other cornish-chickens yet, he ended up being at least a $17 turkey.  Plus, he still has a lot of eating and growing to do before he is edible himself.  Sometimes I have to laugh at the predicaments we get ourselves into!

Wish us luck in the turkey adventure, so far it certainly hasn't been easy!