The blog has been quiet lately, because it’s that busy time of year when I’m balls deep in both snow and paperwork for our homeschool program. This morning I woke up with the best intentions to work on both of those things, only to be thwarted by a snapped hydraulic cable on the blower chute (again), and the MSC portal being down (still).
It seems the Fates do not want me to be productive today. Instead, I will be talking to you fine folks about the joy of raising turkeys.
I’ve been raising chickens for fresh eggs for 11 years, but in case you did not know, chickens are the gateway drug of livestock. One minute you think you will just keep a few hens, the next you have thirty chickens, five ducks, three goats, an alpaca and ee i ee i o!
When I lived in Ketchikan, my space for livestock was limited and I did not know anything about turkeys other than that they taste good with stuffing and gravy.
But when a friend’s beloved pet turkey came down with bumblefoot and needed a dry place to recover (Ketchikan is so moist, if you live there long enough you will grow gills on your neck and moss on your back; I’m pretty sure it is what H.P. Lovecraft’s Innsmouth is really based on), I offered up my dry barn. That is how we met Miss Nelly.
Nelly was spectacularly happy in our dry barn and changed the way we looked at turkeys forever. I had heard all the stories of domesticated turkeys being the dumbest bird on the planet. One friend told me they would drown when it rained, because they wouldn’t stop looking up. Another was convinced the term “bird brain” was coined about domesticated turkeys. Nelly proved all those stereotypes wrong. Nelly was as affectionate and playful as a puppy. Nelly enjoyed snuggling the people she knew. If you walked into the barn, she would come up to you and insist on sitting on your lap.
Nelly looking for snuggles. 
Nelly was jealous of my cockatoo, Garuda.
Nelly lived with us for several months until we left the island and moved to our current home in Talkeetna.
We started raising turkeys our third year here, with poults bought from a farm on Wilderness Rim; bourbon reds and standard bronze.
Poults are notoriously delicate, much more so than chicks. It is for this reason that most Lower 48 hatcheries will not ship live poults to Alaska anymore. If I am not mistaken, Cackle Hatchery is the only one that still does. Poults need to be warm, but not too warm. They are also more susceptible to disease than chicks.
Out of all the poults I’ve raised, I’ve only ever had one batch with a significant amount of deadloss. Poults are also much more personable than chicks; they do not fear their human caretakers. In fact, they crave affection.
Turkey eggs are speckled, larger than chicken eggs and fantastic for baking.
The trick is finding the nest! Our turkeys free range and they definitely do not like using the nest boxes we provide, choosing instead to make nests out in the forest. It’s like an Easter egg hunt every day during their laying season.
Some turkeys keep their friendly, inquisitive personality.
Others turn lethal. It is easy to see that birds are just dinosaurs with feathers when you keep turkeys. Bob turned aggressive towards the smaller children, Altair in particular.
Forty pounds of bird can be dangerous to a twenty pound toddler. Bob had to be culled.
In fact, if you raise turkeys, you know that the stereotype of the dumb, helpless bird is completely unfounded. There is a legend that says Benjamin Franklin argued for the turkey to be placed on our nation’s seal, and while that is not entirely true, he did write the following in a letter to his daughter:
For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perch’d on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him. With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping and Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country, tho’ exactly fit for that Order of Knights which the French call Chevaliers d’Industrie.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-41-02-0327
I am on this account not displeas’d that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For in Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. Eagles have been found in all Countries, but the Turkey was peculiar to ours, the first of the Species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and serv’d up at the Wedding Table of Charles the ninth. He is besides, tho’ a little vain and silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.
We still enjoy eating turkey, even though we’ve come to love and respect them in a way we never did before we started raising them. I have no problem butchering animals raised for meat, even though it is my least favorite part of the process, but we generally outsource our processing to Frosty Meadows; the small expense is worth not having the hassle of that particular job for me. But we also have a new tradition. We watch the documentary “My Life as a Turkey” every Thanksgiving as well.
Life with turkeys… it’s kind of like this:
