Little Einsteins

A new era has begun on the farm. We now have TURKEYS.

Collin has done such a good job marketing his wonderful "Collin's Cluckers" eggs, that when some of his customers heard we were considering raising a few turkeys they quickly put their name down to buy a finished bird this fall. They are on the growing list of families who appreciate how our livestock is raised and handled.

A few turkeys for our own holidays and for the freezer turned into ten. They arrived this afternoon.

After dipping each individual beak in the water, then the feed, I put them under the heat lamp where they all collasped from exhaustion. Hatching is an arduous business, and these babies were barely out of the shell when they were put in boxes and mailed. Probably less than 12 hours old. They still have their "egg beaks".

No, the one at the top is NOT dead, although he scared me for a second. Within a few minutes of this photo, they ALL looked like that. A fuzzy carpet of flat birds. Yep, all worn out from their first big adventure -

The turkeys were shipped in a box along with some other chicks we had ordered. When Carrie opened the box to unload the turkeys here at the cabin before taking the chicks home to the brooders set up at the farm, she looked them over and said, "I'm assuming these are the turkeys." They looked just like the chicks. Almost. The wart on the forehead was a clue. When we counted out 10 warts into the box-brooder, we both agreed, they were the turkeys. We had ordered ten, and there they were!

The second thing I noticed as I handed them into the brooder box, was the size of those FEET. I know turkeys are larger than chickens, and I guess it starts from the ground up!


The temperature recommended for turkey poults (babies) is 95 degrees, then you start lowering it over about two weeks until you get to 70. It takes some fiddling with the heat lamp, a rope, and a thermometer, to hit the right temp. Of course, once you have it perfect, the ambient room temp (my back porch) drops because it is still close to freezing here at night, so then the brooder temp drops. I can see I'm going to be doing middle-of-the-night every-two-hours baby checks, for tonight at least. Thought I was done with that when MY babies were a couple of weeks old...I'm getting too old for that nonsense.

As I was studying up on raising turkeys, one of the comments I ran across tickled my funny bone. This fellow is an experienced poultry farmer, raising all sorts of birds. He maintains that turkeys have gotten a bad rap about not being the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, that compared to Cornish Rock cross (fryers), turkeys are Einsteins.

I made the brooder out of a Dell computer box - I want them to have every opportunity to increase their intelligence.

"Whachu lookin' at? I'm an EINSTEIN!!"

I think we'll call him Albert.