Tag Archives: narragansett turkeys

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End of September

Here’s where we’re at…

2 turkeys went to Freezer Camp…Dingus and an auburn Narragansett.
Still have the rest of the whites to do, and another tom.
2 muscovy drakes joined them.
They were dicks and needed to be culled from the flock…leaving us 3 drakes to over winter with the hens and younglings.
1 pekin drake has been done.
We ordered 10 pekin ducklings and in a very odd twist, it seems like we got 2 drakes and 8 hens. That’s wild, because normally you get more boys than girls.
So we have to narrow down the last of the pekin hens we’re keeping and butcher the rest.
3 geese are in the freezer too.
Leaving us our breeding pair.

Garden is starting to clear out.
All but 4 tomato plants are stripped and pulled.
Beans are done (except for my blue lake pole beans and my rattlesnake beans, which I’m leaving as long as possible for seeds).
I’m working on pulling carrots, beets and onions.
Then I’ll mow the entire thing and cover with straw.
I moved a few rhubarb plants to new spaces, and I’m working on an asparagus bed.

I have the chance to get some horseradish plants later on this fall, so I have to get my 1/2 whiskey barrel planters situated where I want that.
I love horseradish and love the idea of growing it, but it can take over fast, so it must be contained.
The barrels moved out here with us from the city house and have sat empty of plants since.
It’s time for them to be filled.

Our load of duck eggs in the incubator produced 4 ducklings.
2 strong ones (so far, knock on wood), 2 that needed help to emerge and ended up passing.
The incubator has a difficult time keeping humidity levels high enough for ducks (I really hate styrofoam incubators…like really, really hate them), so sadly, it ends up shrink wrapping the poor little dudes into the membrane within the shell and suffocating them.
So eff that crap.
I’m on the hunt for a better incubator for doing ducks.
Something that can hold humidity better.
I fear I may have to make a bigger investment than I want too…
But
As far as sustainability goes, it would be a good investment, because of course, there are other birds here to incubate as well as ducks, so it’s not like it won’t get used. Often.

We moved the little chickens (10 each lavender orpingtons and jersey giants) into the main chicken coop.
It’s only been 1 night, and they’re confused af about not being able to get back into their former house (that’s where the 2 ducklings are), but after a night or two of being carried back to the right coop, they’ll get it.
We have at least 7 roosters between the 2 breeds, so I have good pick for who gets to stay and who gets to be fajitas.
Then next spring we’ll be able to hatch chickens out again.
EmmaBird the turkey and her 8 kids got a yard added to their brooder…with a lid so she can’t screw off on them and the chickens can’t get in to steal the kids’ foods.
Littles get a high protein feed that the regular chickens just don’t need…but everyone loves like it’s candy. And I ain’t payin’ $30/55lbs to feed it to laying hens when they have their own feed to eat!

And of course, we’re still cleaning up the yard and getting ready for the next season.
I’ll tell ya, that spring flooding kicked the crap out of our back yard.
It’s so overgrown with horrible weeds that I can’t use the regular lawn mower on, Hubby has to use the tractor mower, but with all the stupid little chickens hiding in there, it hasn’t happened yet (and because we have other things that have taken precedence over mowing…). Hopefully soon.
I really would love to see *grass* growing next year, but I fear I’ll have to sow some seed for that to happen.
*sigh*
I guess I’ll worry about it next spring, after we see what this winter has planned for us.
:/

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Emma Birb

Back on August 2nd, I noticed our Emma turkey hen was missing, had been for about 3ish days…and then out of the blue, she popped up out of the former duck yard (which is massively overgrown with weeds).
That’s another one of the shitty things about flooding (aside from all the obvious ones) is that weed seeds come from where ever the water did to establish themselves exactly where you don’t want them…
At least in this case, those giant sumpweed trees (because they really are the size of smaller trees!) have come in handy…but I think I’m gonna burn ’em down this fall.

So I said to the family that I think Emma is broody and has a nest in that yard…Hubby waded into the mess of weeds and, in fact, did find her sitting a nest.
So that was cool.
By that time, she’d been sitting for 3 days. I figured in another 25 or so, we oughta see poults.
And, guess what??
Thursday, 28 days after she’d gone missing she appeared with…

8 poults.
There’s only 7 in the picture because my Kid was cuddling one…baby turkeys are super cute little fuckers, and must be cuddled. 😉

Sure can see that Oscar’s influence on them…Oscar is my auburn tom, Emma is an auburn too…huh, I might be breeding a flock of auburn Narragansetts!
😂😂😂

Now poor 12 and 13 (who are traditional bronze colours) are trying hard af to go broody too.
They really want what Emma has.
But, nope.
Way too late now.
Bad enough that there’s a chicken in the same mess of weeds sitting on a nest of turkey eggs…
I really oughta go in and candle them and see how far along the eggs are.
If they’re not far, I should just take ’em away.
But, poults!
😂😂😂

At least I know that the Oscar Meyer Wiener is doing his job!!

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Anatomy of a Turkey Dinner

Since we last talked, things have shifted in the Narragansett breeding program here.
Let’s preface this entire discussion with this…

Tom turkeys are whores.
The best ratio for tom to hen starts at 5 hens to 1 tom.
10 hens is better, because toms are whores.
And if there’s not enough hens for the toms, the hens suffer.

So, here’s where we’re at…

I have 4 toms.
Oscar, my main breeding tom, who is a lovely auburn color.
He’s an asshole. He and I have had several “come to Jesus” meetings, wherein I made it known that *I* an the dominant tom in the yard and I will not put up with shitty behaviour towards the humans.
He has always been respectful of the hens.
Dingus, my second breeding tom, who is the traditional Narragansett colouring.
He’s a good boy with humans, was a good boy on his dates with T.D., and has been good with the hens overall.
Another auburn tom, who is for the dinner table once he fills out.
And Wayne…Wayne is a table bird, but he’s a nice bird with greying in the traditional Narragansett colouring. While he’s pretty, he’s not breeder quality. So Freezer Camp is his destiny.

I had 5 hens.
Yeah.
So ratio is off, but they’ve been in a much bigger space and free ranging for the past few months and all has been well.
Until yesterday.
And that’s where our next turkey dinner was discovered…

So we go off at sundown to put the birds to bed in their coops, and I find StupidShit (a nasty, mean assed hen who will fight anyone, everyone, and their sister/brother) dead in the door way of the main chicken coop.
And Dingus is fighting Wayne and the other auburn, forcing them out of the coop…
We separated the auburn, Wayne and Oscar for the night in another shelter, so we can discuss and figure out what to do with this development.
Toms fighting amongst themselves is understandable.
Killing hens?
That’s a Red Queen offense.
And because of that, we need to be 100% sure of our decision before acting on it.

Over a glass of wine, we rehashed our winter, where we were finding dead turkeys and ducks in the turkey yard…at first we had thought that the weather was getting to them…then we figured out there were issues between Oscar and Dingus (because Dingus went over to the chicken coop and the deaths stopped.)
We assumed it was Oscar killing the other birds due to jealousy, because Oscar is the dominant tom.
But then, Oscar and the rest of the flock ended up in the garage…and we had thought that he was the only tom.
But we discovered that there were 2 others in with him….Wayne and the other auburn.
*We* didn’t know they were toms, but *Oscar* would have.
Huh.
We didn’t think anything of it, we had no deaths of hens, and all did great until we moved them to their outdoor quarters…and they all had access to Dingus again.
And then, last night…
A dead hen, and Dingus aggressively fighting Wayne and the other auburn.
Hmmmm…
So separation ’til this morning.
Once the hutch where the 3 toms was opened, they hopped over back to their chicken yard, where Dingus immediately went at them.
So Dingus was moved to the other yard…and that lasted about a minute before he went back over and started shit…while hens cowered in a corner of the yard.
Uh. Huh.

And so, now Dingus is in bird jail in the garage, and there seems to be calm in the turkey/chicken yard.
Hens are pecking and scratching and eating, Oscar is strutting (he *always* struts), Wayne is in the other yard (by choice it seems, no one put him there and he knows how to get out) and the other auburn is wandering about singing.
It is clear that Dingus is the problem.
And Oscar never was.

Y’all know what that means…

I have to Red Queen Dingus.
He’ll get to stay in jail in the garage until the current heat wave breaks next week, and then off to the freezer he’ll go. I don’t really have room, but I’ll find a way to make him fit.
There’s no room in my yard(s) for a shitty male bird.
Roosters, drakes, toms.
Shitty boys go to the freezer.
It’s a shame I hadn’t figured out *he* was the shitty one sooner…

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Catching Up

Garden, garden, garden.
Birds, birds, birds.
Work, work, work.
Yard clean up again.
Forage, forage, forage.
More garden, garden, garden…

And started the incubator with the last 6 eggs I’m having hatch out this year…

That’s from our lone surviving Sweetgrass turkey hen, crossed with our big Narragansett boy Dingus.

I’m hoping for super hardy poults…there were many times through the winter from hell that we thought T.D wouldn’t be alive the next day…and yet, that tough little turkey-who-thinks-she’s-a-duck pulled through every. single. time.

So we’re hoping that tenacity breeds true…while Dingus is an amazingly sweet boy, for a tom turkey, and is easy to handle…we hope his temperament breeds true as well.

And tho T.D is a smaller turkey, we’re okay with a smaller than a regular Narragansett bird, because we often get requests for smaller turkeys for people’s freezers.

*I* like a monster bird, but not everyone does.

So I’m hopeful this heritage crossing becomes the foundation for the Midnight Calico turkey.

We shall see…

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BullsEye!

Our young Sweetgrass turkey hen has been adamant lately that she needs to have turkey time with Dingus, our 2nd breeding tom.
I said to her “No dating ’til you lay eggs”.
So last week she started laying eggs.

First day was supervised.
We moved Dingus into the duck yard where T.D lives.
Caramilk, one of the muscovy drakes took an instant disliking to Dingus and tried to beat him up.
Kinda funny to watch, but not helpful in getting T.D’s eggs fertilized.
So Caramilk got to spend some time in a big dog crate…food, water and a show while he was in (what we call) bird jail.

It takes forever for a successful turkey mating to happen.
The hen has to lay down and accept the tom.
Unlike chickens, where the rooster can ambush a hen and get ‘er done before she’s fully aware of what hit her. 😂😂😂

We watched Dingus dance and drum and tell T.D what an amazing, handsome, wonderful mate he would be for her…we watched her sit and get ready until the last second when he went to climb on, then she’d jump up and run away…then finally, after a good 45 minutes of “the dance”, she sat, he got on, he danced on her, she looked like he was killing her (totally normal), and then they got the deed done.
Like chickens, turkeys mate with a cloacal kiss that, once they get together, takes seconds.
Unlike ducks, who have corkscrew penises and mating takes a fair bit longer.

With 1 clearly sucessful mating done, Caramilk still in bird jail (and clearly outraged that this interloper was chasing *his girlfriend* around…which is something we’ll have to keep an eye on, to make sure Caramilk doesn’t try to mate T.D), we wandered off to do some garden work.
Over the day, there was at least 1 more mating, and T.D laid her egg for the day.
Which meant I could check Sunday’s egg for evidence of fertilization.

Saturday night we put Dingus back with the chicken hens.
And moved him again Sunday for, hopefully, a few more rounds with T.D.
Then we could leave Dingus back at the chicken coop and collect fertile eggs from T.D for a week to incubate.
Hens will hold the tom’s sperm in their oviducts for roughly 3 weeks…so we could hatch out for that long if we wanted. Since I’m not aiming to run a whole bunch of hatches, I’ll only collect 7 eggs (after 7 days of collecting the first ones collected will drop in possibility of hatching).
Next year I’ll collect more, if I like this crossing.

So Sunday I collected T.D’s egg and made sure to mark it as hers.
Yesterday, I cracked it open, hopeful…
Lo and behold!

It’s hard to see in the picture, but *it is there*.
A bullseye around the white dot in the egg.
That means T.D’s egg is fertilized.
YAY!
And now I’m collecting her eggs (stinker didn’t lay one yesterday) so that this weekend coming up, I’ll get them into the incubator and see what our Sweetgrass/Narragansett cross makes in poults.
Fingers crossed for hardy af, super cute, well growing, not overly huge, birbs!!
I’ll keep y’all updated…
😉

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Leetle Birbs

The first of the turkeys have hatched.
Out of 24 eggs set in the incubator, we have 10 poults.
But, considering we lost power 3 times in the incubation cycle, I’m happy to have had *anything* hatch.

We did have a few that were well formed but quit in the later stages of incubation.
Sad, but that happens sometimes.
Again, power outages don’t help.

But the 10 that did pop out on their own are hopping and bopping around the brooder, having a grand time being happy little birds…

I set 14 more eggs a while back that are due to hatch after June 6th.
Just because I’m hoping to add more hens to the flock so our boy Dingus can have his own harem.
Then I’ll have 2 Narragansett breeding groups.
That’s the plan, anyways.
We’ll see how that goes.
😂😂😂

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First Hatching

This morning I took the turner out of the incubator.
A day later, as usual.
Good thing I got it done first thing this morning, because 2 eggs had already pipped, and now?
This:

First little turkey has emerged!
Pretty excited fr this year’s hatchings.
I have 24 turkey eggs in here, with 13 guinea fowl eggs.
The other incubator has 14 turkeys that I started 2 weeks later.
And that’s the whole of our hatching for this year.
Tho, I still have a ton of birds coming from the hatchery on the 31st….so it’s not like there won’t be a bunch of bebes around.
Still waiting on the ducks to lay, but at least they’re back in their yard, not in my garden.
🙂

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Not Much Goin’ On

Got through another blizzard.
Rain/snow comin’ this weekend.
Feelin’ like the winter that never wants to end.
Donkey horse did this to herself:

I’m sure she had one helluva headache after that.
She sure was grumpy with me when I poked and prodded it.
lol
Someone had to poke at it and see how bad it was.
😉
Good thing it’s not fly season or sunburn season, otherwise she’d be even unhappier with me.

This week I’m firing up the incubators.
No chickens this year.
Got no roos left.
Sadly, in the hellacious winter of 21/22, I lost all my roos to shitty weather and a respiratory infection that blew through my coops like crazy.
So only turkeys.
And a few cross bred ducks…and guinea fowl…both of those I’m picking up from a FB friend who asked if anyone was interested in some to hatch out.
Um, yeah!
Haven’t managed to have ducks hatch in the incubator (came close with a couple muscovies but they quit a week or so before they were due) and never had guinea fowl, so, for free eggs?
I’m willing to give it a try.
Now we let our duck hens do the work, because muscovies love, love, love to hatch bebes.
And aside from late season nests, I’m happy to let them.

I’m currently up to 15 turkey eggs to hatch.
Today we discovered, much to my chagrin, that one hen we thought was a hen turned out to be a tom.
So Oscar (my main tom) has only 6 girls instead of 7.
I’m just hoping that the newly discovered tom stays subservient long enough that we can get him to a better size for the freezer.
2 breeding toms is plenty and I don’t have enough hens to give Dingus any right now, so keeping a 3rd tom is just not gonna work.
Plus, toss in the whole avian influenza thing going on, selling a live bird right now is more of a pain in the ass than normal…plus, we like turkey, and we let these jerks breed so we can eat the extras, so…

Tomato seeds are popping up through the dirt.
I’m getting ready to sow a few more.
Only have 36 little cups (though each cup has more than 1 seed in it and I’ll pot up any extras that come up from those multiples…except for the San Marzano…I only had 10 of those seeds, so 1 per cup) and that ain’t going to be nearly enough tomatoes for us.
Tomatoes is like beans…I could plant an acre of ’em and that *might* be enough for us.
😂😂😂
All my other seeds that I ordered, have come in.
Hubby is just picking up bits and bobs here and there when he’s at the feed store or the hardware store.
Mostly adding to the carrots/beets supply of seeds.
We go through a lot of both.

And that’s us.
We’re just waiting on spring to really and for truly get here.
And for hands in the dirt/building season to begin.
YeeHaw.

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Turkeys Is Stupid

I know I’ve said it before.
I know I’ll say it again.
Turkeys is stupid.
Now, I tend to love my stupid children…that’s what I call my breeding group…my stupid children.
But every now and then you get one who is either a complete idiot (more so than their flock mates) or a complete asshole.
Idiots can be kept, if they’re not too much trouble.
Assholes?
Welp, those are the ones we eat.

Way back in winter we moved the turkeys to the garage after a particularly bad storm.
Except for Dingus (a tom) and StupidShit (a hen)…those 2 stayed in with the chickens because they were happy there.
Since it’s been much, much nicer, and all the coops are open during daylight hours, StupidShit has decided she must go into the duck yard and pick on T.D.
T.D. is a sweetgrass turkey who never really grew, and who the ducks decided was their turkey…and she seems to be able to speak “duck” so she lives with them, acting like a duck. Hence the name T.D., which is short for…TallDuck.
What can I say.
I’m not terribly inventive when it comes to naming animals.
🤷‍♀️

Anyways, StupidShit (because really, that’s exactly what she is…and she’s not even a nice hen, she’s a nasty shit…where Dingus is a big stupid tom, but sweet as hell and easy to handle, she’s a c**t) decided that she must visit with T.D., which was all well and good until she started picking T.D.’s tail feathers out, causing bleeding.
Yeah, that shit don’t fly with me.

So, StupidShit got corralled and sent to Oscar for…attitude adjustment.
😉
Because Oscar is my dominant tom, and the hens behave for him…or else.
Oh, but the corralling…
I should have grabbed the net, but she’s tried to rip her way out of it before…
So I went into the chicken coop, where she was trying to hide from me, and grabbed her.
Low and behold, that bitch tried going for my face with her talons as I reached for her.
Thankfully, I got my arms up in time to block her, and knocked her on her feathered ass, from which I grabbed her leg and hung her upside down ’til she tired her stupid self out.
Then she got carried, upside down, across the yard to the garage, where Oscar and the ladies had free run of the garage while their hut was getting scraped out.
StupidShit got a fancy green band (just a zip tie) on her leg, and then released.
Well damn if she didn’t try to take her bitchiness out on 13 right away, and Oscar dropped her with a well placed shoulder…😂😂😂
That’s *exactly* what she needed.
And when she tried to get up?
Both Oscar and Emma dropped her again.
Emma is the head hen in Oscar’s group and she, like Oscar, will accept no shit from anyone.
The only ones those 2 defer to are the humans…and even then, I had to *remind* the OscarMayerWeiner who the real boss was.

While we finished cleaning and re-bedding the turkey hut, StupidShit got educated over and over on using her stupid turkey manners. By the time we had to herd them back to the hut, she was a thoroughly deflated hen.
Good.

Once we got back to the house, I had a chance to clean up the presents she gave me…

I’ve got a matching one on the other arm.
Not gonna lie, I was pretty darn happy to see Oscar and Emma discipline her.
Today she seems to have calmed down.
When I went to collect eggs, she just moved to the other side of the hut and stayed as far away from me as she could. And all the other hens were happy to get their morning treats, so it’s not that she’s taken up bullying anyone else.

Now we’ll see if she settles into being a good hen for Oscar.
If so, she’ll get to stay on.
If not?
Welp, I’ll Red Queen her.
😉

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3 Weeks

In 3 weeks I’m going to traumatize the turkeys.
Again.
In 3 weeks they’ll get a deep cleaning of their hut (with weekly spot cleanings in between now and then) and deep, fresh straw added.
Then, in 3 weeks, I’ll start collecting eggs for the incubators.
Right now the eggs are being washed and eaten (because yummmmmmmmy!!).

Right now, my brooders that Hubby built me last year are all under snow.
So we’re not ready for itty bitty birbs.
Yet.
But in 3 weeks…
We’ll be closer to getting them ready.
So I’ll set eggs, and in the 4 week time it takes for turkey eggs to hatch, we’ll have those brooders ready for bebes.
Which is good, because at the end of May I have:
10 pekin ducklings
10 lavender orpingtons
10 black giants (regional variant of Jersey Giants)
5 white geese
and
25 white turkeys
to pick up from the feed store.
So yeah…Ima need those brooders.

And by the end of May the muscovies will be laying and hopefully some of the hens will be already sitting nests. If not, then soon.
I can’t wait for aaaaalllll the leetle bebe birbies to be here!
😍😍😍