Turkey pen

Last week Bill built a small barn yard for the turkeys. They're ready to go outside and eat up yummy ticks, but we'd still like a little control over where they go, so now they have their own little pen.

We also clipped their wings. This was absolutely as terrifying as it sounds. Bill was in charge of grabbing and holding the turks, while I cut the feathers on one wing. With just one wing cut, they can still hop up a few feet, but they can't fly over our fence and on to the neighbor's roof.

At first, of course, they didn't know their wings were clipped and they kept trying to fly away from us, resulting in hilarious nose-dives. Ok...it was mostly sad, but a little funny.

We can really see the difference between the jakes and jennies now (I think those are real turkey words?). The males are developing waddles and snoods, while the females' feathers are becoming lighter in color.

Sadly, the day after these photos were taken, we found one of the males dead. We suspect an evil-doer dug under the fence and killed him. I've read lots of reports of people loosing whole flocks in a single afternoon, so we're glad it was just one. We don't think it was a sky monster like the one that got a hen last year - the turkeys are much bigger than the chickens now and the dead guy still had his head, unlike our hen who got hit.

Today the turkeys spent the day safe in the barn and Bill filled in the possible entry under the pen with cement. Hopefully the 13 that remain will be a lucky number. No more unintentional turkey deaths!

The baby chickens are doing great. Photos soon! We think we can start telling their sexes. We ordered straight runs of some birds, which means the chicken packers pick a random handful and throw them in the box - it is cheaper and more adventurous that way. Unfortunately, of the 6 wyandottes, it looks like 5 are males.

Also doing great...socks: