The Call Again Farm Journal

Tonight, I went outside to do the evening chores.  I took care of the chickens, and then headed to the turkeys.  I headed through the barn as usual, turning on the lights in the stall to encourage the turkeys to come in.  I went out the back barn door, and was surprised that nobody was perched on it.  Usually, there's one, two, or even three on the top of the door.  Even more surprisingly, there were no turkeys on the fence.  Instead, standing next to the fence, were only the two young hens, looking rather freaked out.

I was feeling rather freaked out.  It was 8:20, dusk.  The turkeys should have been perched on the fence for fifteen to thirty minutes already, waiting for me to bring them into the safety of the barn for the night.   Plus, the other turkeys were missing.  Two missing turkeys could be accounted for, the two broodies in the barn, but still that left three turkeys gone.

I started looking around the pasture for the missing turkeys.  I didn't see any by the northwest corner.  When I glanced back toward the barn, I saw a third turkey!  It was Two-Tone.  She was on the wrong (east) side of the fence, so I let her back into the pasture.  I brought the three hens into their stall in the barn, and checked and made sure Gray and Rosy, the two broodies were there.  They were.

I glanced around the yard.  No more turkeys.  I went and got Bob, who was in the house, to come out and help out.  I also grabbed the flashlights.  Bob took one flashlight and looked along the road to make sure the turkeys didn't get hit by a car.  Meanwhile, I walked through the wild raspberry patch see if the missing hen, Blue, had a nest there and had gone broody.  I didn't really expect her to have, as she's gone broody in July previously, but I had to make sure.  No Blue.

We both figured the woods was the place to look.  The turkeys have a tendency to get out of the fenced-in pasture to go forage in the woods behind the barn.  Dianna came out, and went to make sure the missing turkeys somehow weren't somehow hiding in some shadowy corner of the barn.  A minute later, I found the turkey feathers in the woods.  They were a suspicious pile of feathers, lots of them, tail feathers and down.  That many feathers wouldn't naturally come out at once.  We'd stumbled across the crime scene.  I knew at once the missing turkeys were dead.  I was sobbing, wailing, and blubbering.  My favorite hen, Blue, practically a pet, was gone, and so was my only tom, my astoundingly handsome tom, Big Guy.  Meanwhile, Bob followed the feather trail, which led right to the fox's den.

We started to head back in, our hearts heavy, when I realized I'd never finished the evening chores.  Bob went to close up the barn.  Suddenly, he called out,  "How many hens do you have?"

"Five, now," I yelled back.

"Well, I count six," he replied.

I ran to the barn.  I looked in the stall where the turkeys were.  Had Blue somehow managed to be in there without me seeing?  No, only three hens: Two-Tone and the two young ones.  I gave a reproachful look to Bob, and made some angry remark.

"No," he said.  "There's two turkeys in there."  He pointed to the empty Northwest Stall, where Gray had made her nest and is now broody.  Sure enough, on that nest, you could see two heads, and one of them was Blue's!  Either she's been laying her eggs there and  is flirting with broodiness, or, more likely, she got freaked out by Big Guy's death and went to hide in there.

I'm going to miss Big Guy, and not just because his death puts an end to this year's breeding.  As Dianna pointed out, he was cut down in his prime.  As I mentioned before, he was really good-looking, oh-so-handsome.  He also had learned how to manage his hens better.  I loved them, always followed them around and tried to protect them from everything, even me.  He still could throw his weight around a bit, generally hogging the feeder, but gradually was getting nicer and more generous in his dealings with the hens.

His death calls for bringing the turkeys in earlier at night, perhaps 7:30, keeping better track of their whereabouts,  and fixing the places in the fence that the turkeys usually get out.  We're not going to feed the foxes anymore.

Exciting news!  I saw the first of the turkey eggs rocking this morning!  Inside the egg, a few days before hatching, the chick (in this case, the baby turkey, or poult) breaks into the air cell at the big end of the egg and starts breathing the oxygen in there.  When the air in there gets very fowl, the poult tries to start hatching so it can breath.  The poult was trying to start hatching, but hasn't chipped the shell yet.  

The turkey eggs should hatch on Thursday.  Therefore, I was not exactly surprised to see the eggs rocking, as this usually happens two to three days before the eggs are due to hatch, but the first rocking egg of each hatch is always a thrill.  It's good news in the very stressful business of hatching, the worst part of incubation.  When hatching goes well, it's magical and happy.  When it doesn't, it's heartbreaking.  

I'm really nervous about this hatch because of the trouble I've had with incubator temperature through this incubation.  The wrong temperature leads to weak poults which leads to a poor hatch.  There's nothing sadder than a poult trapped in an egg.

The rocking egg was something normal, but it meant that at least one poult was progressing just fine.  It one reassuring sight in this nerve-racking hatch.