Turkey Troubles...

We ended up with two turkeys from the surprise hatching yesterday!  Which is quite exciting, we feel blessed to have any excitement at all after the trouble we had with the incubation process.

They took a while to get dried off and gain composure after hatching. I wondered, developmentally, how they'd be, given their temp troubles before hatching.  I fully expected death or complications after hatching, once we got over being so excited they actually were hatching.  Sure enough, they have some leg issues.

Here is the hatching unit we used once they were out of the incubator and needed more time to finish hatching (the incubator has a wire base, and the heating element is pretty low and I didn't want them to burn their heads on it).  So I moved them to the hatching unit I made years ago.  It is a little hillbilly, but it works fabulous....maybe I should have incubated them in this too because it sure is easier to maintain temps in it than in the incubator so far.

My homemade hatching unit made from an old cooler, dimmer, 40w light bulb, old extension cord, and of course duct tape!

So this morning, after checking on them at 4 a.m. I realizing we had issues. I Googled how to deal with  it and formulated a plan.  One had curled under toes and wasn't balancing properly and the other had spraddle legs (like he is doing the splits basically.)  

Inside the hatching unit...

I wrangled up Sunshine to assist me and we got to work doing our best to remedy the issues. For this guy with the curled under toes, the remedy starts with the simple band-aid that has been trimmed down a little.  See how the toes curl under him and they don't spread out to support it's weight? That is what we are trying to help fix.

Here are the bandages trimmed and ready to go, we will use the padded part as the flat surface to spread the toes out onto and the tape parts to secure it until the toes can set right.  Like a splint.

I think we got it positioned fairly well and hopefully it does the trick.

I am not really sure why, but scenes from the movie Forest Gump kept running through my mind this whole time. lol

Here is the 2nd turkey poult, with the spraddle legs.

Poor baby, he was so frustrated he couldn't get anywhere!

This bandage we cut in half lengthwise to use as a sort of hobble to keep the legs from spreading out further than we want them to. So he can learn to walk and balance with feet under him.

Standing pretty good already, hopefully he can keep it up.

We will keep you posted if this temporary solution has any effect on their issues.  They say if done early enough it gives them a good chance of being able to walk normal and strengthen the legs.  I certainly hope so after all of this drama surrounding the turkey adventure! Hoping they do well.  I think they need names.  Any suggestions?