Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
can make their own babies and have natural nurturing instincts. On more than one oc-
casion I've had a turkey hen escape from the breeding pen and nest in the surround-
ing fields or in the edge of the garden.
I fondly remember a few years ago seeing a Royal Palm hen fly up on the roof and
then down into the edge of the orchard. I'd see her from a distance each day while
working in the garden, but had no luck finding her. She was laying a clutch of eggs,
but was smart enough to fly back up on the roof and return to her shed every night.
One night she was not in at curfew and I feared the worst. For the next few weeks
I tried looking for her in my spare moments, to no avail. I thought for sure she was a
goner.
Finally, after about three weeks, I found her at her nest, very carefully chosen and
well concealed in a brushy wild plum thicket near the edge of the orchard. She looked
at me with inquisitive eyes, and seemed to be considering what her escape flight plan
should be. When threatened, turkeys tend to stay with the nest until the last possible
second. Looking at her big soft eyes and knowing all the work she had put into pre-
paring her nest, I did not have the heart to grab her, trim her wings, throw her back
in the breeding pen and take her eggs to the incubator. I decided to wait until she
hatched her eggs before making my move. I'd then steal her babies and throw her
back in the pen.
I had correctly calculated her hatch date, but when I checked, I discovered I was
a few hours late. All I saw were the shells of the hatch-lings. Several days later, I
found her deep in our nine-acre garden with her little brood. She was a superb mom;
I watched her raise all of her young. What a treat it was to watch her teach her poults
how to survive, and hear her call to them, warning of impending danger.
She never came to the barn or pens for food that summer. They spent the season
dining strictly on forage found between the garden and orchard. When the weather
started getting harsh that fall, she brought them all home to her shed. She was an ex-
ample of a truly sustainable system that provided insect control for the farm, fresh
turkey meat in the fall, and future breeders for our flock.
Housing
We raised the four groups of turkeys in our large plastic brooder tubs until they were
two weeks old, transferred them to metal tier brooders for three more weeks, and then,
because it was a warm summer, to adjoining pens in a long shed, built to raise turkeys.
The groups were separated only by wire and we had to step through one pen to get to
the other. Not wanting the commercial whites to be isolated from the others, I organized
