Seven Weeks Black Spanish Turkeys Are Outside! New Coop Design

It is hot hot today, but thankfully, the new coop allows for great air flow! The Coop is finally done.  It is not tooo heavy, but I think it will be solid enough for Aries and Luna. I will still need to paint it.  It's only a primer right now. But you can see that the Poults are over a foot tall now and growing rapidly.  They are just starting to get feathers developing on the backs of their necks. A canvas tarp will protect them in the evenings and on rainy days.  I will need to start on their run now. It will be similar in style, but setting on the ground to allow them to forage safely. Heritage turkeys are supposed to be great foragers.  As they get older/bigger, we will let them out of the pen and forage in the field.

The Start - a base on sleds	The front with sliding plexi-glass door
Luna Checking the new Coop Digs	Aries standing under Roosting Bar
Still using small feeder/water until they get larger	Back wall with Clean out door
The door panel is secured to Wood on front wall	Canvas Tarp will be secured with bungie cords
Roost is a 2" x 3" bar attached to Front and Back Panels

Heritage Turkeys at five weeks old

The turkey babies are growing growing growing! The pen that I had them in was just too small after a couple of weeks and, well, it is too cold outside still for them. I had originally hoped to have their coop done to keep them in the coop in the garage until they are old enough to go outside.  Well, that's not done yet.  It is only a floor of a coop, right now. They don't have enough feathers yet and are still babies, in a sense. I have an outdoor bunny pen that is about 3.5ft sections, so I put half of it together to create a decent enclosure for them out in the garage.  I have lots of old sheets so that's turned the pen into a turkey fort to keep out the drafts. I put grass hay on the floor for them (on a sheet to keep it contained).  I also put the brooder warmer in the pen/fort.  The warmer was too small/short for them at this point, but I have placed it up on blocks to give them room to get under it, if they want to just in case it gets too chilled in the garage. In the first photo, the roost is about a foot off the ground, and they have to duck their little heads to walk under it, so you can see just how much they have grown in the pictures. This at least should hold them for a few more weeks for the weather to warm up in June. 

Black Feathered Friends One Week In.

The turkeys are growing fast! If we truly have a pair, we think the one with the black dots near the ear region is the Tom. That one is more assertive and interactive. We are calling that one Aries. The other one, we are fairly certain is a Hen and we are calling her Luna. Their wing feathers are filling in on both and they are almost twice as tall as a week ago. I put a stick in the cage for them to start roosting on. They are not quite as peepy as chicken pullets, but definitely peep loudly when scared (in the dark). We're adjusting to each other. They seem healthy.  I don't see any lethargy or strange behaviors. That's about it for the week.

Day Two Turkey

So these pix are a little better, but still, either I move or the turkey moves and, well, blur is inevitable. I created a little mound of shavings and paper flakes to make the brooder-warmer more inviting and, well, warmer for the Black Spanish Turkey babies. While it is difficult to "sex" turkey babies, we think one is a tom based on mannerisms and size.  But time will tell.

Trying the Turkey Trot

All I know this far is that raising Turkeys and raising Chickens is similar but they cannot be co-mingled. The two turkey poults that we ordered arrived earlier than I anticipated! Yikes!  They are not much larger than the chicken pullets at a few days of age. So that's good, because I don't have their coop put together yet. Yikes! Yikes!  We do have a few weeks to put it together. I had a hard time getting any good photos. 

They are the Black Spanish, which actually originated out of Mexico when Spain invaded South America. They took the black turkey back to Spain and England, then the colonists brought it back to America! Ha Ha! Any way, the Black Spanish is considered a Heritage breed. It is smaller than the turkeys eaten at holidays and they can be bred naturally (no artificial insemination needed). We will see where this goes. 

I have heard that this breed of turkeys is very friendly and easy to handle.  They will fly, especially the females because they only weigh about 15-18 pounds at maturity. They have been reported to fly onto roofs of houses.

These turkeys are supposed to be good forages, eating slugs and bugs, as well as grass and grass seeds. This will be perfect for our upper portion of the field. 

Everything that I have read indicates that the babies are prone to die off during the first two weeks, and then again around 6 weeks.  These are the vulnerable transition periods. Even the experienced turkey farmer reports about 25% die off of their chicks.  I am hoping for the best! 

Gardening Fun in the Spring

Gardening in the spring is fun and challenging, especially when we have unseasonably hot weather for a week, then back to spring temps for a week or two, then the hot again. Let's see, the updates on the gardens.  We have three raised beds, One bed is mostly garlic and onions with a row of early spinach in there.  The 2nd bed is currently lettuce (variety), spinach, carrots, and dill. The 3rd bed is reserved for the corn. The hothouse has starts in it of parsley, basil, peas, lavender, cucumbers, bell peppers and rosemary.

Then we have several five gallon buckets of peas, blueberries, strawberries, greek oregano and lavender. Plus, we have four 35 gallon black garbage pails with red, blue and gold potatoes. Whee! But the weather is causing some really crazed events, like the thunderstorm with the potential for hail the size of a quarter. So we quickly placed tarps over everything that was out and established. Luckily, we were on the outer edge of the storm with only a small amount of hail and lots of rain and lightening.

Here are some photos of the garden beds and the bucket garden brigade, so far.

Will be Corn	Onions/Spinach/Garlic
Red Potatoes	Blue Potatoes
Basil	Red Spinach
Peas	Purple Garlic
Blueberries	Strawberries
Re-pot of Lavender	Oregano

The Mystery Plants of Spring

Every year, we discover an/other new plant(s) on our property. Some years, they are noxious, and poisonous weeds. But sometimes, they are productive plants.  Then, there are always the plants and things that come back year after year, no matter what we do. Such as Blackberries.  The fact that the winter temps hardly dipped below freezing this year, the blackberries are growing faster than we can dig them up. We will need to get a backhoe to get these beauties! We have almost acre of berry coverage. Ugh! This is a view of about a third of the blackberries.  I don't know if you can tell, based on Lucky, but these bushes are up to six feet tall in some areas. Ugh again!

 

We found an interesting blooming tree in our field that we had not noticed until this year. It's an Apple tree!  We assume that Lucky (the horse) planted and nourished that tree in a pile of horse apples. hahaha  I think we have another young apple tree out there.  We will see if Lucky lets it live.

 

We also discovered an ash tree that has survived the horse in the field.  Most times, the young trees don't survive because Lucky loves to chew on the bark, push on the tree as a scratching post, eat the leaves, etc. To see these trees growing quite tall out there is an unusual find! We also have holly trees and some types of sticker bush trees that Lucky avoids and we try to pull them out at least once a year. 

 

Today was a beautiful spring day. Not too hot and not too cool. Gentle breeze and the garden is loving it. This is a photo of my favorite shade tree. It's a maple tree.  I guess I just never realized just how much pollen this tree produces! Wheeee! All those yellow buds are enough to cause me to sneeze. 

Late last fall, we threw out some ground cover seed where we pasture the chickens and the other discovery today was a bunch of oats! Oh boy, are the chickens gonna love this new plant. 

That pretty much brings you up to speed on the findings for the season. 

Garden is great. Strawberries, Blueberries, Peach, Cherry and Apple Trees (that we planted last year) survived the winter.  Garlic survived. Onions did not. I had to replant from seed and they are so tiny that I opted to purchase a handful of onion bulbs for this year. Red and Blue potatoes have good growth. Yukon and White potatoes are planted, but not out of the ground yet. Spinach is doing quite well.  Lettuce has just started. Peas are late. Got a late start and I think something ate most of the seeds out of the soil. I planted some more, in the green house to try to get more for replanting. Planted first row of carrots and dill. Starting basil and parsley in the green house. Got another garden area ready for planting corn in a month. Will plant more carrots, plus beans at that same time. We have our gardening thumbs on. 

No chicks this year.  We are going to wait until next spring to get some more.  We have eaten the old hens and they were very flavorful! The Wellsummers and the Orloffs are producing very well this spring. The wet sloggy winter cut down on the production. We ended up adding pro-biotics to their water for a few weeks to get them to feeling better. 

We do have request for a couple of turkey chicks at the farm store this year.  I decided we would try to raise a couple of turkeys for the holidays. So that will be our "adventure" for this year.