Turkeys

Hubby came home from work a few months ago and asked if we wanted turkeys.

After hearing from him several times over the last few years that we were never getting turkeys, I was quite surprised to hear this from him.

One of his workmates has a friend who has 60 turkeys free-ranging and they were becoming a problem and needed to go.  Because she'd started with two originally, they were all her babies and she didn't want to eat them or know about it if anyone was going to eat them.  She wanted to be able to tell herself they were going off to be pets for someone who would love them like she did.  She'd tried selling them on TradeMe, but because of the recent push for certified humane animal breeders and sellers, her ads kept getting removed.

We talked about it for a few weeks and I rang her.  We converted a pen in a paddock to a turkey house thinking that if we clipped wings, the deer fencing would be sufficient to contain them.  Then we finally went to pick them up with a covered box trailer.  The theory was that if we threw some food in, they'd go in after the food.  I think it took about half an hour for any of them to brave the trailer - after the roosters had been in and out a few times.  After a while, we figured we had all in there that we were going to get and shut up the trailer.  We got six turkeys, four boys and two girls.  And two roosters who escaped as soon as we got home.

Six turkeys investigating their new house.

In my head, I knew turkeys were big.  I hadn't physically seen a turkey since I was a small child though and then they seemed like ostrich size.  I was still surprised by just how big they were.  Then seeing how high they could jump (even without flying) meant that the deer fencing would not be sufficient to keep them contained.  The paddock next door to their paddock had been planted in green feed, mostly oats and kale.  I'm fairly confident our neighbour would shoot and eat any that he found in his greenfeed and I couldn't blame him honestly.

We'd planned to shut them in their newly built house for a couple of days anyway, like I do with any new chickens I get, so they get to know where home is.  The need to create a covered run meant they got to stay confined for a week while the run was created out of deer fence waratahs (or Y posts as they're more correctly named) and 2m wide chicken wire.  Dad and Hubby sat down and did the maths to figure out what would be the best size, utilising existing fencing to get the most area out of 100m of chicken wire (including roof).  Then they discovered that the roll of chicken wire was only 50m and they'd run out with the run only half roofed.

Exploring the covered run.

Finishing the run took a little longer than expected, or rather it took longer than planned because delays, dramas and holdups are pretty much expected these days.  But the turkeys seemed to like their new run and spent a lot of time exploring it.

I worried a little on and off as their wattles seemed to be going white.  In chickens, white comb and wattles are a sign of ill health and I assumed that turkeys were the same.  I spent some time on google but couldn't really find anything definitive - one website suggested that wattle colour in turkeys was more a sign of their mood.

Pale wattles 

Last weekend, ten more joined them.  The lady I mentioned earlier has been feeding the turkeys in a caged trailer for the last month or so and they're used to going into the cage on the trailer for food.  It made shutting in more turkeys a piece of cake.  She and her hubby thought they'd even enjoyed the hour drive to our place.  They'd been quiet but still alert and watching everything around them.

This is the four boys just as the new turkeys were joining them.

As they were backing the trailer up to the turkey run, the six we already had found it quite threatening.  The girls rushed off and hid in the house, while the boys puffed themselves up, tails fanned, wattles bright red and snoods hanging halfway down to their chests.  The new turkeys coming to join them had come from the same place they had, they'd only had approximately a month apart, but obviously the pecking order had to be re-established.  There were lots of fanned tails, red faces and thrumming noises over the next hour or so.  

Pecking order being sorted

They seem to have it mostly sorted out now, but our head count shows ten boys to six girls, so those numbers will need some serious adjusting very soon.  A friend has mentioned she has another friend who has turkeys, so I may try and arrange a swap for some boys just to get some fresh bloodlines in - I think all of mine are related.  I'm fairly sure the lady we got them from said she started with one pair and from them came the other 58.

She also told us that the facial colours are a sign of mood.  Red wattles and blue-purple round the eyes is when they're agitated, upset or fighting for dominance.  Pink and white is a fairly relaxed and normal state.

We did managed to drive the escaped roosters towards the chook run.  Once they realised that there were 40 or 50 odd hens on the other side of the fence, they were no longer worried about me chasing them, they suddenly started posing and nonchalantly showing off for the girls.  One wouldn't go into the chook run for another two weeks.  He nearly became dinner as he'd start crowing outside our bedroom from about 4am, but we did eventually get him in there.