We went and got hay from the lady that grows lovely hay and came back to the barn to store it before the rain came and to freshen up the barn with a bale, just putz around with the flock. We noticed that two of the turkeys were in the barn playing around in the hay and such. But three of them were missing.
This morning when I let everyone out and fed and watered everyone, the three in question were playing and being little boys. I’m so sure they were toms because they were playing king of the haybale and just playing so rough and tumble with each other. The two slightly smaller ones were just scratching and eating, catching bugs and just being, well, a little more demure and delicate. I didn’t think too much about it, just delighted in their differences so quickly.
But it was getting later in the evening and they weren’t back to the barn. After dinner, Luna and I went for a stroll and I hoped that I would find the little turkey muskateers and herd them back to the roost. We walked out along the windchime tree and back in the far pasture where they had been the night before. Nothing. The raspberries are just starting to turn red and soon, we’ll need to be out there picking the good ones before everyone else gets them. We walked out to the far corner and the little cemetary, nothing. So we started back on the diagonal path that we have been mowing back to the barn and then I found them. All dead.
They had been murdered very clearly by a hawk. They were beheaded and gruesome gashes to their chests, feathers all about. All laying together in a little area together. About 50 feet from the barn, 50 feet from cover. The hens never go out in the open field, they know better. And it just didn’t occur to me that the little babies wouldn’t know that, and know to stay in the thickets and near cover. I know turkeys have a bad rap for not being the brightest bulbs in the box, but still, I thought our turkeys would be exceptions to that rule, and just be somehow, smarter, wiser. Alive!
Luna sat there with me, looking quite puzzled. I’m sure that it wasn’t a cat or a dog, it just so clearly looked like a bird of prey. I felt so angry at myself for letting this happen. I should have kept them secure in the barn longer. I should have known better. I read lots on the internet and such, but no one warned about letting them free range too early. I thought they would heed the call of Bucka, and stay close to the flock. Learn from them. But they didn’t, and I failed them.
I laid their little pale cold bodies in a hay nest in an old basket and brought them into the pig barn so that hopefully no critters will bother them until morning when I can dig them a proper little grave. I went and caught the two little survivors and I locked them up secure in the feed room. I put all my chickens to roost and told them all to be careful and to stay out of the pasture.
Came in the house and told the girls. We were all very saddened by this, our first livestock loss. I knew it would happen. Everyone that has livestock, must learn to deal with deadstock. It’s a cruel fact of farming, even small scale farming. Here on the cusp of hatching perhaps our first little babies to the farm, we loose 3 little babies in our care, so easily! It is such a hard lesson to have to learn!
I read many people’s blogs about going rural, about learning to farm. I hope that I learn from them all, their success and their failures, because I don’t have this built in network of my farm family siblings or parents to teach me since I was 5 how to do all this. And it is why, tonight, I must hang my head in shame and share this hard lesson that we have learned. You must be big enough to free range. You need to be old enough and wise enough. 2 month old feathered poults, even though they seem like they have it going on, are still little goof ball teenagers at best and they just don’t have the experience that a year old hen has.
So tomorrow, we are going to start and rehab the little coop. It’s a perfectly good little structure, just needs some TLC, some weeding and a good layer of chicken wire. Our little survivors will have a safer, more protective area for their new home. This was a very hard lesson learned, and I’m sure we will have others, but I just hope they are not at the cost of innocent little lives that we have taken on to protect and nurture.
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