For The Love of Turkeys
(or the post in which I convince all my readers to be crazy-turkey-enthusiasts)
Now,
you may be asking yourself why on earth you need or would much less
want turkeys, I mean seriously; the only time you think about having a
turkey is for thanksgiving. Yep, ahuh.
Well I'm here to tell you otherwise!
As
you know (or you may not know?) I got 8 turkeys this past spring, along
with a dear friend of mine. I raised them in my room (yes, you read
that right) for a month or so, give or take a little, and fell utterly
in love with my goofy little darlings who would display and act like
grown up turkeys, even though they still had soft down feathers and
scrawny little legs. Oh yes, I was hooked from the very first moment I
opened up that cheeping box from the post office and held the darling
little boogers.
Little by little, they eventually moved into a big dog kennel.
One
morning I let them out to free range; came back an hour later and found
three missing. Went searching and found a couple plies of feathers and a
leg...yep coyotes (that's what we're assuming) came right up to the
house and carried off three of my precious babies, WHO
also just so happened to be my only females. As of now, I have five goofy
toms, who never desist from keeping me entertained!
Know
that you have a little back story of how I plunged into raising
turkeys, lets move on to the statistics, shall we? Of course we shall!
My
boys are currently housed with my waterfowl (geese, ducks, muscovys).
One thing you must keep in mind when raising turkeys, is to not house
with with chickens, or peafowl. They can get a serious sinus
infection from their droppings, and just trust me, you do not want to
deal with that! So either house them by their onesises, or with other
birds that are "safe", such as waterfowl.
My
boys defiantly rule the roost in their pen, but they are not aggressive
towards any of the other birds in the least. as far as I can tell.
Every now and then a fight will break out amongst the different toms,
but other than that, they all live in relative harmony together.
As
far as housing goes, they roost in a metal house covered with pine
shavings, and run around in a big chain-link pen during the day.
There are many benefits of raising a small flock of turkeys.
Meat - Many people raise a few turkeys just for thanksgiving dinner. That way they know exactly
what that turkey has been eating, how he was raised, and can provide
their family with nutritious meat, without hormones, fillers, etc.
Pest
Control - Turkeys are excellent forgers, and if given the chance, will
consume quite a bit of their own food. Have a garden? Lots of bugs? Your
turkeys can help by eating up all those pesky bugs. If given access to a
pasture, they will gladly gobble up grass, seeds, and plants of all
sorts. Tired of mowing your yards? Enlist your turkey's help..or get a
goat, but that's a whole nother' post. ;)
Gardening
- I've often set my birds to work 'tilling' (a.k.a scratching) up the
garden, and they are more than happy to eat up any extra garden produce
or scraps. If you have birds of any kind, they poop. What? It's true!
Those droppings, and all that soiled litter you shovel out of the coop
is excellent fertilizer for your garden crop, and flowers.
Pleasure
- There is nothing more relaxing and soothing, than watching a flock of
turkeys mingle and interact with each other. A lot of people (like
myself), have a few turkeys around just for pleasure, and or pets. *ahem*
So you see! There are lots of benefits to having a few turkeys around the place.
Still need convincing? Here's a few more things I love about my tom-boys:
They have warty skin. And it's adorable. That is all.
Their feathers (and themselves in general) are gorgeous! Just take a look'n see:
They are ridiculously adorable, and have puppy-eyes.
They like cuddles, and think your lap is the best place to be. Especially if you have snacks.
They display, and think they are the hottest thing to ever walk the earth.
They gobble, and make this (odd) 'booming' sound..and it's really cute.
Seriously
tho, I can walk out the back door and holler "Hi babies!!" and they
will start gobbling like crazy. Sometimes, we even get into gobbling
matches. They always win. I've yet to master my turkey gobbling sound,
I'm afraid I sound more like something dying, rather than a turkey!
They have a chest beard..thingy..that I forget the name of.
They have a snoot. Nuff' said.
A rarely known fact: turkey's favorite occupation is to photo-bomb. Beware, lest you end up with a pictures like this:
Be afraid, be very afraid!
People
say cats are curious, right? Well, they have clearly never owned a
turkey. I cannot go, or do anything without having these five goobers
looking over my shoulder and pecking my camera lens.
My five stalkers:
They are very photogenic.
Too much adorableness in one picture, yes? Of course yes!
"Look at me. Love me!"
Samantha, these are for you:
Jack
Thornton, the turkey. And YES! My cousin and I totally did name a
turkey after the mountie from When Calls The Heart! Deal with it.
Don't you see the resemblance? Of course you do!
Handsome Jacky boy struttin' his stuff:
So
want to join the ranks of us crazy turkey enthusiats? Jump on the
bandwagon, so you too can get your fingers pecked by noisy-too-curious
turkeys who think they are puppy-dogs:
and shovel manure with the rest of us.
And get gobbled at every time you walk out the door, and master the art of turkey language.
Come join the party folks! Times a wastin'!
Blessings -
~ Crazy-Turkey-Enthusiast
