Saturday, August 27, 2016

Aries Turkey Inferno

The poor turkeys were almost fricassee as a fire raged in the pasture. Thankfully, neighbors immediately came to help and shortly after that multiple fire trucks and fire fighters arrived on the scene. 

After the turkeys were released from their pen/coop, they flew to safety while a couple of fire trucks were navigated into the pasture and hoses were stretched across the road into the neighborhood up the street. This necessitated the police blocking the streets to protect the hoses! Santa Vaca!  

Thankfully, not too much was burned but the smell is intense.  The door on the pen is a little melted, but still, all in all, the coop and pen are intact and functional. The turkeys were a little traumatized, and rounding them up took some efforts. They had found the neighbor's apple tree and decided that was a perfect location to chill while those crazed men and women worked to put out that fire. 

What started the fire? Well, the week was an especially hot one, turning the pasture into prime tinder.  The electric fencing sparked the fire. We so totally appreciate our local fire fighters for saving our pasture and our home! Also, our kind neighbors were very helpful in the early minutes of fire. 

The turkey coop has been moved to a new location and the electric fencing has been taken down. Oy! What a nightmare this could have been!  On the positive side, it did burn up a good section of blackberries.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Bigger Turkeys Need more Space

The turkeys are about 15 weeks old now. They sure do grow quickly! 

This week, we worked on setting up an electric netting area for the turkeys.  They are leery of it, and, they can fly over if they choose, but have not in the past few days. There's plenty of grass, seeds and weeds for them to forage at this point. We need to get some better mid supports for the fencing. The stretches are about 13' so the sections can get pretty saggy without mid supports. Right now, we are using fiberglass supports to hold up the fencing. So, for now, the two turkeys have approximately 40'x40' protected grazing area to keep dogs, cats and coyotes out. 

Electrified Net Fence

Curious Turkey Look

Black Spanish Turkey - 15 weeks

Other Black Spanish Turkey at 15 weeks

Turkeys Forage

Turkeys like the new area

View of area with pen