Too Many Turkeys?

It’s been quite a year for turkeys. Back in June, when the mornings were cool but the days were warmed by the climbing sun, the opening of the saga that is now just coming reaching its curtain call in the land of poultry commenced. Every two weeks a new batch of baby meat chicks were arriving (400 in total by the end of the summer), with early morning runs to the Post Office to collect cardboard boxes filled with cheeping fuzz balls, ready for their new life on our farm.

With the last shipment of chicks, I had ordered 40 white turkey poults to augment the heritage turkeys I was hatching in the incubator from our home flock of Jersey Buff, Narraganset and Royal Palm breeds. But just a few days before the little fuzzies were set to make their journey, I received a call from the hatchery.

“We are having a little problem with your order,” the lady explained. “We don’t think we’ll have enough turkeys to send with the chickens, so we’re planning to send the turkeys along a week later.”

Typically, I like shipping the turkeys with the chickens because they help keep each other warm on the trip, and turkeys are prone to leg troubles caused by their feet getting too cold when they’re little. But what could I do. If there weren’t enough turkeys hatching, the hatchery couldn’t magically make more appear just days before sending them off. So I agreed to the one week hold and waited for the call from the post office.

But isn’t there an old saying, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch?” Apparently, that applies to turkeys as well!

It was early on a Wednesday morning when the phone rang (typically around 5:15 am), and I caught up my coat and boots and made the drive into town with Steve to rescue the last round of 100 baby chicks. We cranked up the thermostat to warm the vehicle for their comfort, catching a latte for him and a chocolate chai for me to help us stay awake in the stifling warmth.

I climbed the ramp to the back door of the Post Office, old beach towels in hand to drape over the top of the box to prevent exposure to drafts, but I was surprised when the lady emerged to see not only the large chick box but the smaller turkey box strapped on top as well.

“Guess they did have enough turkey poults after all,” I reasoned. “It’s better this way anyway, we’re on track with all our chicks, and I won’t have to come back for any more.”

But then, on the next Wednesday, the phone rang again around 5:30 in the morning. “Come get your chicks!” was the call. What, chicks? I shouldn’t have any more shipments coming. There must be some mistake.

“Are you sure it says my name on the box?” I asked, sleepy and confused.

“Yup, Laura Berlage. They’re ready for you.”

Then I put the pieces together. Somewhere along the line, part of the crew at the hatchery had filled the order without either typing it into the records or telling the folks on duty the next week. Mine had gotten marked to be sent later and, in the shuffle, had been packed twice!

But you can’t send them back, little turkey fuzzies with big black eyes who’ve come all this way. They’re cold and thirsty and hungry and homeless, so we packed up the car again and made the trip to the Post Office one last time for 40 little turkeys. On the one hand, little birds are so sweet, you can’t help but love them, but on the other my mind was racing as to how we were going to manage these additional members of the flock.

I had planned on raising about 60 birds, now I had 100! That was quickly going to present a housing issue once they passed the little cute stage. Summer bird housing on our farm can already be an interesting shuffle game of moving the hens out of the coop and into their mobile summer quarters just in time for chicks to move in—tricking out the overwintering hen luxury suite into a brooding house. In brooding house mode, the coop has two sections, one being half as large as the other. Baby chicks spend two weeks in the smaller section, two weeks in the larger section, then four to five weeks out in the chicken tractors moving through the pasture.

With chicks coming in every two weeks, when group one moves into the bigger side, immediately group two is in the smaller side. When group one moves out to pasture, group two moves to the bigger side and group three arrives for the smaller side. This continues as well with group four. I only have two chicken tractors, so typically once group three is processed for chicken dinners, the larger turkeys are ready to move in, with the second wave ready by the time chicken group four is finished.

The sticking point is that, while a chicken tractor can comfortably house 90 meat chickens with several moves a day, it’s really only enough capacity for 30 turkeys. So, 60 turkeys would have worked fine, but not 100! Where were they going to go? And turkeys eat a lot of feed too… This was going to be an adventuresome summer.

The adventures started when having the baby turkeys in with the fourth wave of meat chicks was obviously not working. The chicks would snuggle up at night, like they usually do, with the turkeys all mixed in. For chicks, this usually isn’t a problem. But baby turkeys are notoriously dim-witted, and would let the chicks stand on them, getting squished. So I divided the brooder space in half with cardboard and separated the crew, which stopped the squishing but left both sides feeling a little cramped.

As summer progressed, the game of “where will the turkeys go?” continued, with tricking out a retired hen mobile space as a larger turkey brooder space, then moving some back to the main coop as room allowed, bouncing between young laying hens here and meat chickens there. Despite the obstacles, every turkey had space, though it was a summer-long dance much like an avian version of musical chairs!

Now here we are in late autumn, and it’s time for those turkeys to fulfill their Thanksgiving obligations. Needless to say, I didn’t have customer orders for 100 turkeys this spring either, so please help us spread the word about the value of sourcing your Thanksgiving dinner locally, from small farms that raise their birds with love and care.

Will this be remembered as the summer of too many turkeys? Hopefully, it will grow to become the season of lots of happy dinners shared by family and friends, round a table resplendent with a delicious roast bird we fostered and nurtured in the way turkeys should be raised—green grass to eat, bugs to chase, fresh air to breathe, and room to explore.

Either way, there shouldn’t be any more surprise phone calls from the Post Office yet this season! Turkey anyone? See you down on the farm sometime.