Cherokee, our Narragansett tukey, Clogging!

Look at this guy go!

Our Narragansett Turkey, Cherokee (aka Pop Tart) going to town clogging to Cotton Eye Joe!

The Farm in pictures!

We had so much rain this week!  We're actually looking forward to some cold weather to freeze the ground.  Love all these animals!  Cherokee, our Naragansett Tom turkey found himself in a fight with his father.  They live separately and were separated before this fight could conclude.

Two of our Naragansett hen turkeys flew out of the coop and while exploring came across a ground hog who quickly disappeared.

The mulefoot piglets were moved from their enclosure where I have been fortunate to raise them from three week old piglets to 14 weeks and they met their family for the first time.  They are loving it- running, playing and exploring.  They love to sniff the other hogs through the fence.

And lastly, we took Traveler and Sassy, our Quarter Horses, riding in Blandy State Arboretum.

I LOVE AUTUMN!!

37 degrees this morning. I love autumn! Cold nights, starry skies, quiet cold mornings and perfect sunny weather with trees changing colors during the day. Hot Tubs! Warm comforters! Hot drinks! Fires! Pumpkins! Turkeys! Football! Sloppy Joes!  Roasted beets!  Hats and mittens! Hikes, horseback rides! Have a happy, cool sunny Sunday!

PS:  It took a long time and many shots to get this guy (Narragansett Tom Turkey named Cherokee) to pose next to the pumpkins!

Ducklings!

In spite of my policy of 'no more mouths to feed', my turkey hens surprised me but incubating a collection of duck eggs.  The two turkey hens did a great job sitting on the eggs and helping the baby chicks inside develop.  Do you know how long a hen must sit on duck eggs before the ducklings are ready to hatch?

Twenty eight days.

That is a long time to sit if you ask me.  When the first egg hatched, they were not excited to find a duckling.  Our Narragansett turkeys lay eggs with light brown spots so when I investigated their cache of eggs and noticed all the smooth white ones, I knew more ducklings were bound to hatch and I confiscated all of them.  Here are the turkey hens.

I put the eggs into our incubator making certain the temperature was set at about 101F degrees and that there was enough humidity which should be around 65%.  The humidity makes the eggs a bit easier to crack for the duckling.   It didn't take long for the ducklings to start emerging!  The hens had done the hard work of sitting on them and keeping them warm for son long. In the first twelve hours, four hatched.

They aren't pretty when they are coming out.  The duckling will be wet when he or she comes out and very tired.  It will spend time in the heated incubator drying off and resting before being moved to another box with a heat lamp to keep it warm, food, water and other ducklings.

I still had one more egg that was going to hatch.  You can see the first cracks in the egg in the picture below.  This little guy took a long time to come out.  After about 24 hours I became worried and did some research to try to determine if he was OK inside the egg.  It can take up to 48 hours for a chick to hatch but there is a way to 'see' if the chick is OK.  Can you guess what it is?

You carefully pick up the egg and hold it to your ear.  If they chick is doing well and trying to hatch, you'll hear the tap, tap, tap of it's beak against the shell.  I tried it and it was true!  I could hear this little guy tapping away.

I decided to video tape the final hatching and set up my video camera to wait.  

But I made the mistake of leaving to do an errand.  When I came back thirty minutes later, this is what I saw!

Just out of the egg!

And so cute just twelve hours later!

The little family of FIVE!

Are turkeys stupid?

Have you heard that turkeys aren't very smart?  Many of us have heard stories about how turkeys are so stupid, they will keep their heads turned up to the rain with their mouths open until they drown.  Do you believe this? 
Here is my turkey, Cherokee.  What do you think he's doing?

He's making me laugh for one thing!  He knows that his feed is kept in this can and as soon as I open it,  he is trying to get in to get as much food as he can.  When I picked him up and took him out of this can his mouth was so full of food he couldn't swallow.  Probably hard to eat upside down!  Often, I will find him lingering around the can during the day sometimes trying to open it.

Check out this video of my four Tom turkeys.  When I let them out of their house, they have a habit of running down our driveway to cross the road.  Why do turkeys cross the road?  That I can't figure out.  But I do know that as soon as I call 'Gobble Gobble' in a loud voice, they come running!

My turkeys all respond to my 'Gobble Gobble' call because I have said this everytime I've fed them since they were little.  If you come to the farm and yell 'Gobble Gobble' they will often all answer back. 

So, are turkeys stupid?  I don't think so.  As for the rumor about drowning in the rain, I have read many theories.  One that makes sense is that sometimes, in spite of their coat of waterproof feathers, a turkey will get cold in the rain and actually die of hypothermia and not from drowning. 

We'll talk more about turkeys this month!