Our First Thanksgiving Turkey

These are our first turkeys.  We have raised them from just a few days old and now it is time to prepare them for dinner.  The larger male is named Christmas and his smaller mate is Thanksgiving.  We made the biggest mistake of all..... we made pets of them!  Nick and Matthew have really become attached to them. 

Thanksgiving Day is this week and today is the day... the end of the line... for our female.

The male turkey met his maker two weeks ago after a few hesitations by Nick.  He weighed 30 pounds prior to dressing, and produced 22 pounds of meat plus several jars of stock. 

Our Thanksgiving girl will be going onto Thursday's dinner table.

We finally decided that since we bought and raised them as food, we needed to stay firm in the decision.

Next year however, the turkeys will not become pets.

We also raised 24 meat chickens which we had no trouble at all when it came time butcher them. 

Next year our plan is to double the number of meat chickens for the freezer; and two more turkeys.

Our First Chicken Tractor

This weekend Nick and our grandson Matthew built this chicken tractor.  Nick borrowed ideas from a few You-Tubers to come up with this design.

The pvc hoops are secured to a wood frame made of pressured treated 1 x 6, with tee connectors which he screwed to the wood.

A piece of rope threaded through a bit of hose is just right for pulling the tractor across the grass.





 The frame is covered with plastic fencing which has 1 inch square holes.  It is secured to the pvc and to the wooden frame with zip ties.

The back portion of the tractor is also covered with translucent plastic, as is the back panel, for protection from the elements. 

Each end of the tractor opens for easy access.

 

Here Matthew is setting it into position for the meat chicks first day.  The chicks have been living in a portion of the hen house for about 10 days.  We left the door open with a screen to keep them indoors, but with plenty of light and air until they were ready to go outdoors.

They finally have their feathers and have been acclimated to the weather, so they should be fine in their new home.

We have nine Cornish meat chickens.  They are about  3 1/2 weeks old.  We put them into the chicken tractor yesterday and they were totally bewildered by the new environment.

Today they seem more comfortable with it, but they still don't seem to know that they are supposed to eat the grass, not just poop on it.  Nick is counting down to butchering day.  We also have two bronze breasted turkeys which are about 6 weeks old.  They are also for meat.

Chicken and Garden Update

 KentuckyWonder Green Beans 7 rows stands over 8' high 8' wide

I can't believe it's been more than a month since my last post.  It has been so busy here the time has
just flown by!

One of our Black Sex Link hens had been abusing the other hens over the past several months, but until Nick caught her in the act of plucking the feathers off one of the Easter Eggers he decided that for the good of the other hens, her time was up.

He is very attached to our hens and having to "take her out" was painful for him.  It took several false starts over the course of a week, but he finally manned up and  made use of the axe he had purchased for the occasion.  She had the last laugh on us however.  Her meat was so tough we could barely cut into it, let alone dine on it.

Since she has left the flock, the girls feathers are finally beginning to regrow.  Not all, but most of the feathers are coming back. 

Nearly fully recovered from her stroke.

Two weeks later, one of the other Black Sex Link hens suffered a stroke.  The poor thing was so pitiful that first day.  She could barely walk and the other hens all attacked her.  Fortunately Nick happened to be nearby and saw the commotion in time to rescue her.  He removed her from the hen house and the run and set her in a safe place in the grass to spend what he thought would be her final hours.  Well, by the end of the day she was still with us and had managed to work her way to the door of the hen house.  So I put inside one of the laying boxes for the night.  The other girls didn't bother her until the next day.  So once again, out she came into the grass.  She spent a few days like this, laying in the grass, being hand fed, and slowly recovering.  During this time we discovered she was blind in one eye which made it hard for her to zero in one her food and drink.


Now, nearly three weeks later, she has figured out how to see with just one eye, how to find and eat her food and drink, she no longer limps, and although we cannot put her back in the run with the other hens (they won't let her return) they manage to have face-offs with her through the fence and she stands up to the bully. 

Little turkeys adopted a hen mama.

Since the other hens won't let her come back, we moved her into the run where we have two little
turkeys.  The little turkeys, Thanksgiving and Christmas, have adopted her as their mother and it is so cute to see them cuddling up with her.  At night-time she puts herself between them and open space.
They do not have a coop, but a 3 sided lean-to with roosts to keep them off the ground.

We have also gotten some meat birds.  Nine little Cornish chicks which are growing rapidly.  We expect them to meet their destiny by the end of August.  They have about half their feathers, so in another week we will be putting them out in their chicken tractor so they can forage for their food.

3 yrs ago the garden consisted of 6 bags of potting soil

Now that the garden is well established, we let the older hens out to roam and forage where-ever they like.  Since I began twice-weekly feeding of chicken poo tea, the garden has been thriving!  Even the corn which wasn't doing anything has shot up after each feeding.

Tomatoes thriving on the poo tea

The tomatoes are doing much better than I had anticipated when I first planted them.  I planted 40 plants of 4 varieties.  Half of them didn't survive and I had to start over with several purchased plants.
Now I have 30 strong plants and 5 or 6 varieties.  The chicken poo tea I have been feeding them has done wonders.  All the plants are full of tomatoes with more appearing each day.  This is one of the smaller plants and it has 20 tomatoes so far.

Oh, and the White Rock chicks we got back in April which were from a run, turned out to be all females.  We had hoped for at least one rooster in the bunch.

That's all the news from the hen house for now.  Hope your girls are all doing well and your gardens are thriving!