Why, yes, that is a baby turkey! And another chicken! Spring is here, and well, for me that seems to mean more baby birds. And I have wanted to try my hand at raising meat birds since I read “Farm City.” Iris and I were hanging out gardening on Monday when I mentioned that the feed store had a whole mess of baby turkeys, and she was like, well, you raise it my Forrest will kill it for us.” And that pretty much sold me on it. I can raise ‘em, I sure as heck can’t kill ‘em.
So off to the feed store we went. I decided to get a red broiler chicken to be its little friend while it was small. And so we could practice our poultry fixing before we did the turkey in. Chickens are ready to be eaten in less than three months, its crazy. The feed store guy said that they grow so fast that they literally can’t walk after they get a certain age! Crazy.
So this is my experiment in raising birds for eating. I think I can do it, I certainly hope so, or I’m going to have a very large pet bird. Turkelton (named after Turk on scrubs) will probably weigh 25 pounds when he/she finished growing! Yikes! My chickens are around 6 or 7.
So this is Turkelton. Turk is a Bronze Turkey, which is a heritage breed I believe. I need to check out some books on turkeys from the library.
And this is Nell, shes pretty darn cute at this age. I can’t wait to see how big she gets!
And here is my makeshift poultry brooder. It works great. Its easy to clean, stays warm and draft-free, and is recycling!
In other exciting spring news, I have a new renovation project in the works. My dad just bought a gutted, 17 foot Nomad camper trailer for me to use as my studio. We bring it to my house tomorrow, and from there -with a little help from my carpenter friends- I will rewire it, insulate it, and tack up some nice wood paneling. And ta-da, a brand new studio! Keep an eye out for pictures…
Maggie
