Turkey Check Up...

Well we still have Butterball and Snowball, the two turkeys we've managed to keep alive.  Or maybe it would be better to phrase it that they've managed to stay alive in spite of us.  However you want to think about it works for me.  They love free-ranging and we love having them free-range.  They have continued to be good foragers and have left the garden plants alone for the most part.  They are efficient eaters of all things creepy-crawly and green-n-tasty, they only seem to eat a small amount of commercial feed.  We keep some commercial feed available at all times.  They also get into the pig feed we soak for the pigs.  I think they think they have it made here, what a smorgasbord they have to choose from really!

They follow us everywhere as we go about our chores around the place, they even follow the boys down to the dirt pile where they play and then they follow them back when they head back to the house.  I truly adore all the sounds they make as we work in the garden.  I had no idea we'd enjoy turkeys this much.

Butterball checking out the freshly cut hay.

Butterball on the left, Snowball on the right.

I thought we were going to get some electric fence action here but Snowball was just after a bug on the post and didn't touch the fence in the process.  Good thing too, because that fence is really hot!

They have the darkest eyes and the strangest looking heads!

They are really cool animals.  We still aren't sure if we will do turkeys next year.  They were a rather expensive adventure to get started and we weren't all that successful in keeping many alive. We will keep thinking about it and see what we can afford to do next spring.  For now, we are really enjoying these two characters.

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?

Surprise!

I was awakened by a strange noise coming from the bathroom this morning.  Kind of a scratching scrambling noise and there was a curious peep peep.  At 5:15 a.m. it took a while to register what I was hearing...once it dawned on, me I flipped the covers off and raced to look and make sure I wasn't dreaming.

I stared in disbelief as I saw that we had a turkey hatch in the night!  You know the turkey eggs that I was 99% sure I killed with high temps in the incubator?  Yup, those are the ones!  We had one completely hatched, 2 more have pipped.  They are trying to get the job of hatching done.  This is so exciting and it feels like a gift from God!

They also hatched 1 day earlier than normal, maybe higher temps develop them faster! lol  I won't know if they are normal or healthy for a while longer yet, they are still figuring out how to walk and getting dried off and fluffy.  So in a few hours hopefully we will have a better idea.  I am just so excited we have life!

I am so glad I didn't give up on them last week when I was so sure they were dead....I had decided to go ahead and finish the incubation period just in case one was in a cooler corner of the incubator and made it somehow.

I will have to be sure to tell Butterball about the new arrivals when we go feed the older birds this morning!  I am sure he will be excited to have some young peeps to tell about life on the farm.  Thankfully the timing works out well because we have a new batch of chicks in the brooder so these turkeys can go right in with them in a couple days and I won't have to have a separate set up for them if we don't want to.  Although, I have a feeling they will be a little spoiled and stay inside for a while.

I was so excited to be able to share this update with you!  We obviously won't have a good hatch rate beings we bought 24 hatching eggs and it only looks like 3 will even possibly hatch, but after this 27 days of stress, worry, and constant care it feels like a triumph!

 

So we didn't completely fail after all!  Now if we can keep them alive from now on, hopefully if they could survive the inconsistencies in the incubator they are toughened up enough to live through anything now!  

One and Only Butterball...

Well it looks like we've failed at incubating turkey hatching eggs.  We are sad to report that we had a terrible time trying to keep the incubator temperatures steady enough.  This time of year we have such large temperature swings between days, nights, and weather conditions outside and room temps inside that we just could not keep it steady enough.  At first it was swings of 2 degrees at 98-101.  Then we got several unseasonably warm days at 93 during the day and 60 at night and things got more difficult and stressful to keep in a healthy temperature zone.  It took constant checks every 30 mins and small adjustments each time to keep it in the zone.  It was exhausting, stressful and worrisome.

We candled the eggs last week and found about 16 that didn't develop much at all past the first few days.  So we tossed all those and only 8 remained and appeared to be developing.

Then yesterday was when I felt 99% sure we'd done them in for good.  We found the temp in the incubator to be clear up to 106 degrees!  After all day it had been a steady 99-100.2 which was perfect!  That 106 is killer hot.:(   I feel like a failure, because after those weeks of attending to it so carefully and then this...when we are just days away from the hatch date we let the temp spike too high?  What a let down for all of us.:(

We are still going to finish out the incubation period, until the 22nd of May, just in case there is a 1% chance one lived through the heat wave.  I'd be every so grateful to have a ray of sunshine in our apparent failure, but I will also be alright with this being a lesson learned I suppose.

So I guess Butterball will likely be an only turkey this year.  I hope next year to order some from a local feed store and have them keep them for a couple days to make sure they are good and strong and over their travel/shipment stress and try again.  We spent our turkey budget this year on the hatching eggs and since those didn't work out we have to wait until next year.

Things we learned~

*  We are far too busy this time of year to be babysitting an incubator.
*  Ordering turkeys in the mail isn't the best idea, unless we can order them from a fairly nearby hatchery.
*  Turkeys are pretty cool and we really would like to raise them next year.

Thanks for reading about our challenges with the turkeys.  That is what life is about, not everything can be a success.  Hopefully next year our turkey story will go more positively and we can include you along the
journey.

For now Butterball doesn't mind his broiler chicken buddies.

I think he likes being one-of-a-kind.

Turkey Hatching Eggs...

One bright yellow sticker on a rather ordinary box elicits excitement and feelings of giddiness all through the house.

"Fragile Hatching Eggs"

This is the box we've been waiting for.  It's the 24 turkey hatching eggs we ordered a few weeks ago.

The box is open!  The first layer is dense foam, the 2nd layer is 13 eggs, the 3rd layer is foam with deep holes, the 4th layer is another layer of dense foam, then 13 more eggs in holey foam, and more dense foam on the bottom.  The packaging was impressive but we still had 2 broken eggs in the package.  We ordered 24, they sent 26 so we still ended up with the amount we ordered.

They sent some hatching instructions, which is helpful.

They are large and speckled and a little bumpy too.   

Whippersnapper is excited because this is his project.  He gets to help with the incubation process by turning eggs 3x daily for 28 days.  He gets to make sure the water reservoirs are full each day for proper humidity in the incubator and he gets to help make sure the temperature stays just right all the time!

Here they are settled into the incubator.  Warm, toasty, and moist.

27 more days until we hopefully have some hatching action. 

You might remember the surprise order of turkeys we got several weeks early a few weeks ago and how all but one died after much TLC.  Butterball the turkey is doing well and we are pretty taken with him.  He is pretty cute, and personable too.  He's been moved from inside the house to the brooder outside with the 2nd batch of broiler chicks.  He is the only one who comes to see what is going on instead of spooking to the back of the brooder when we open the door to feed them.  He comes over to say hello and tilts his head to the side to see what we are up to.  He seems to be fitting in alright.  I think he really wants some company of his own kind though.  He can be their fearless leader, big brother, and protector.  Butterball has a big role to fill around here in just a few weeks when these hatch.  Hope he is up for the challenge!

Can you find Butterball?

"Here I am!"

He is feathering out nicely, he is also 2X the size of the broiler chicks.

Way to grow Butterball, you are quite enjoyable to have around.  Hold on buddy, your new brothers and sisters are on their way in 27 days!

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!