Having the turkeys processed last week was far from the end of our turkey journey.  Now we are left with 4, one tom and 3 hens.  If you read the popular book, ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle’, you may recall that turkeys bred for commercial productions have had the natural mating ability bred out of them in favor of things like bigger breasts and faster growth.  For this reason, we chose a heritage breed which grows more slowly, (Much more slowly, in fact.  Our birds ended up being underweight when we brought them in to be processed!) but can still mate and raise little ones without human interference. 

Thus, we have 4 remaining turkeys that we hope will mate and hatch young turkeys.  A couple of the hens seem to be exploring motherhood.  They will come across an egg one of the chickens has laid and claim it as her own.  Just today, I witnessed one push an egg out of a nest and onto the coop floor.  I was surprised it didn’t break.  I watched her roll it all around and try to find a comfortable spot.  Well, maybe she couldn’t get comfortable or maybe she didn’t enjoy me gawking at her, because she eventually abandoned the egg.  When I walked over to pick it up, I noticed that it was cracked.  On other occasions, I have gathered eggs that a turkey was sitting on and found them to be cracked as well.  So, with all this clumsiness, I wonder how they’ll ever hatch a turkey?  And since the hens seem to sit on whatever egg they find, will they adopt whatever hatches as their own?  It’s an experiment I can’t wait to try!

And on a related note, we donated a dozen eggs to a local Montessori to incubate in their classroom.  I can’t wait to find out if they were successful!  We’ll keep you posted.

~Kelly