So I get an email from my daughter.  She simply states, "Your blog is a little out dated."  Yes, dear!  I know that.  It's no revelation here!  I've just been too busy! 

I don't even know the last time I blogged, that's how busy I've been!  I know we had snow on the 11th of June and I meant to blog about that.  Never got it done!  I know my goats have both had their kids and I meant to blog about that.  Never got it done.  I know I've been working hard putting in my garden, which is behind schedule due to the rain, snow and cold, so that's where all of my energy has gone.  I come in the house so tired I just clean up and fall into bed.  I don't even get in any reading time, which is what I normally do before falling asleep to relax.

Yes, my goats have both kidded.  My Sweet Pea had twin chocolate colored girls last Thursday the 12th.  Maybe that snow storm helped bring on the labor, but I don't think so.  She was 3 days late.  Then I came home today to two new little ones in the barn.  Miss Snow (or Maa Maa) had a boy (another chocolate latte) and a cream colored girl with a white saddle across her back.  Just adorable!  I need to get some better pictures to show you all.

For now I will post a blog post I had started a while back, but wanted to add pics to it, so here you go!  The red print is the update!

You just can't imagine the eggs and chicks around here.  The night before last, or should I say 4:30 in the morning, I awoke to birds chirping and the dog barking.  I assumed the next batch of turkey poults were hatching in the incubator.  I went back to sleep.  Upon waking I checked out the incubator and only saw one poult.  One little turkey can be noisy, but not as noisy as what I heard at 4:30 am!  Then it started again.  The day before my son thought he'd heard birds chirping in the house.  We often get birds that come down the chimney, but we had a screen put on the cap and thought that had taken care of the problem.  Wrong!  There's a nest in the cap of our chimney!  So the birds lost out.  I called the chimney sweep and had it cleaned.  It was getting too cold in here.  Although we have hot water heat, as my luck would have it, it was not working properly.  I've worked on those zone valves before and this time the zone valve won!  The chimney is clean, the birds have moved on and there were no babies in the nest, just eggs.

We also have a little nest of Rosy Finches in a hanging basket on the front porch.  There are no flowers planted in there yet, so they are safe.  It's been fun to watch them. 

Then there's the incubator!  At the moment there are 7 turkey poults in there.  I will need to prepare a box for them in the morning and get them started on some feed!  I sold those 7 to a neighbor as well as 3 of the others the hen raised, so I am down to 4 baby turkeys, shown here.

So along with the other chicks I've blogged about, we are a regular bird farm around here!

One of the 8 little turkeys died last evening.  I am assuming it's the one I babied with the goat's milk, but I am not sure.  It doesn't come as a surprise, since baby poultry is very venerable, but I was hoping not to loose any.

Another person suggested putting marbles in the food dish to encourage pecking.  I had read about that and do have marbles in the food and water dishes.  You can see the big marble in the picture of my last post.  I do think it helps.  I have noticed that turkeys prefer diamonds, however!  They really go after my wedding ring!

Diamonds are a turkey's best friend!

Wow!  Things are sure busy around here.  Never a dull moment!  I haven't had much time to even check email, let alone do any blogging.  The sun is out and it is STRONG!  We had temps in the high 80's for 2 days.  I am not impressed.  We've gone from winter to hot summer in just a couple days.  Who knows, it could snow this week!  The saying is, if you don't like the weather in Montana, wait 5 minutes!

Along with the warm temps comes high water.  We live with water all around us, but not very close.  Lots of swamps, which equates to lots of mosquitos and I noticed last night there was a big hatch!  Years ago I did some reading about mosquitos and found out their eggs can live in the soil for up to 10 years.  It takes standing water for them to hatch, so in a year of high water, you can actually have eggs hatch from the past 10 years!  It's always a battle here.

Friday morning I had a wonderful surprise!  I had put 8 turkey eggs under a chicken hen who was setting in the coop.  When a hen goes to setting, she gets "clucky", as they say.  She puffs out her feathers and makes these little mother hen clucking noises.  She will get off the nest once a day to eat and get a drink, but then she's back to her business of setting on her clutch of eggs.  Twice I went out to gather eggs in the evening only to find her setting on another clutch of eggs the chickens had just laid!  I touched the turkey eggs and they were not warm.  I went ahead and put her back on her nest and gathered my eggs, figuring nothing would come of the poor little turkey eggs.  Well May 16 was the due date.  I had just resigned myself to the fact that I would have to toss them all in the garbage.  When I opened the door to the coop, there was a broken egg shell.  My immediate thought was that some of the other chickens were eating the rotten eggs.  (There's no limits on what a chicken will eat!)  I lifted that mother hen up and MUCH to my surprise, there were 5 baby turkeys under her!  Within an hour all 8 had hatched.  I am still in total awe!

Here's the proud mamma hen in the nesting box.  If you look closely, you will see a little bump just above the beak.  That is called a snood on a turkey.  Both males and females have them.  They get very long on an adult male. 

Baby chicks have a special little hook on the end of their beaks called a pipping beak.  It helps them to pip their way out of the shell.  You can still see the yellow tips of the pipping beak on these babies.  After a few days, it disappears.

Here I have moved them to their brooder box.  They can be away from the chickens and have a heat lamp in there to help keep them warm.  Turkeys are very temperamental and not very smart.  They have to be taught to eat.  I've been working with them, dipping their beaks in the food and water, but the hen is a very good teacher.  It's fascinating to watch her take some food and toss it on the ground for them and talk to them in her chicken voice to try and encourage them to eat. 

And this one was just too cute not to show you!  They all climb up inside her warm feathers and ride around, sometimes nestled inside her wings and feathers.  If you want to check on all of them, you have to pick up the hen and let the little chicks drop out.

Yesterday morning I was showing them to my friend Kathryn.  When I opened the brooder box, one was just laying there about half dead.  It was cold.  I had turned the lamp off and shouldn't have.  I scooped it up and tried to warm it.  After Kathryn left I gave it some goats milk and put him in a little pot under the heat lamp.  Poultry can be unmerciful when there's a weak one.  They'll peck it to death and step on it.  Then I went in and boiled them some eggs.  My dad raised turkeys once and told me they love hard-boiled eggs.  The protein is good for them.  Once the little poult was strong enough, he just tipped that little plastic pot over and joined the rest of them! 

I think the goat's milk and the eggs saved the little one!  As of this morning they are all doing fine.

Very egg-siting!  A full dozen!  I've got the incubator up and running and I am hoping to put the eggs in tomorrow.  It takes about that long to get it regulated for temperature.  I want to make sure it's all done right.  A scientist I am not and for me to be fiddling around with thermometers, thermostats and hygrometers is simply not my style!  You're never too old to learn!

Notice the jumbo egg on the left!  I am sure it has 2 yolks.  I will be surprised if it doesn't!  I'll keep you posted!

Here's the mother hen who has been doing all of the laying!

Here are all 3 turkeys.  The big one in front was a freebie.  All were supposed to go into the freezer, but here we are!  (If you look close to the left of the turkey above, there's a white rooster sitting on a brooder box.  He was the lone escapee who managed to avoid execution back during butchering!)

The turkey has laid 9 eggs.  Number 8 was HUGE, probably a double yolker!  We'll see what happens with it.  I have ordered the wick for the incubator to regulate humidity.  When it arrives I will get the incubator going.  I think the hen will lay one more today and then take a day off like she did last week.  This whole thing has been fascinating to watch.  Each day she lays 2 hours later than the day before!

On the walking/picking up cans topic, I haven't been!  I didn't take the time with company here and then it turned winter again!  We've had snow and wind and cold.  Maybe I can get some time in today!

Baby chicks:  Had a dead one this morning.  It's not uncommon.  I still have 26!  They are very happy in their brooding box.

Spring is always so welcome here in Montana.  Today we have a coating of the fresh, white stuff, AGAIN!  It's been snowing off and on since last night.  I am due to start lambing today, but few look close.  Often a storm or low pressure system will bring on the birthing process.  Nothing yet.

It was fun to do the chores this morning with a fresh blanket of snow.  You can always tell a lot more about what's going on outside by the tracks in the snow.  After milking I followed a chicken's foot prints in the snow all the way outside of the fence and over past the shop to the large 5 acre garden spot.  It stopped at the fence.  There were bunny tracks mixed in and all jumbled together, so I have to wonder what went on before I even dressed for chores this morning.

I could hear the Sandhill Cranes in the swamp, the song birds were chirping and the Canadian Geese were honking.  As I looked back over my shoulder to see what the crows were causing a ruckus over, a Bald Eagle was circling just above them to see what they were dining on.  I really had to stop for a moment and just listen and watch and drink it all in.

The reason I was on a hunt was because I was looking for turkey eggs!  I got home last evening and walked up the back steps only to notice 4 "dirty" eggs under the steps.  I thought it was odd that 4 dirty eggs were left there.  As I looked closer I realized they weren't dirty, they were spotted and must be turkey eggs!  I have never before seen a turkey egg.  I gathered them up and took them inside rather than leave them for a magpie feast.  I placed 2 wooden eggs in their place as "decoys" so the hen wouldn't quit laying there.  I am hoping for more!

Let's go back to the beginning, the beginning of turkeys.  I didn't realize it until I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that most breeds of turkeys do not know how to reproduce anymore.  It has been completely bred out of them.  They are artificially inseminated and then the eggs are taken away to be incubated by machine.  When they are hatched out, they are not reared by their mothers.  It's sad that their cycle has been broken.  

I have thought for a while now that it might be fun to raise turkeys.  I've never even attempted to even raise purchased baby turkeys, so what am I thinking?  I've heard the stories and seen first hand the losses that friends and family have endured due to the stupidity of the little birds.  That's part of the intrigue to me.  That and the fact that my Dad and my Father In-law both raised them in their younger days.  My FIL grew up with turkeys and recently admitted to getting into a lot of trouble for teasing them.  Maybe that's why our Tom doesn't like him!    Years ago, my FIL's family was the only family around who raised turkeys.  This was the place to come for your Thanksgiving bird.  They would nest naturally and raise them naturally.  He's 86, so you can see what havoc man has done in the past 80 years or so.

During my Dad's recent visit he told me the 2 hens I have should be starting to lay anytime now.  He said I need to watch and see where they sneak off to and I will then know where their nest is.  Lucky for me, one of them was literally laying them at my feet.  I have yet to find the other nest.  I have spent most of the day keeping an eye on the turkeys every hour or so.  It's currently 5:30 and still no egg under the steps.  

Here are the 4 eggs I found yesterday.

My Dad instructed me on what to do with them.  He said mark an X on the wide end.  Then mark an X on every other day on your calendar.  They need to be turned every other day, so when there's an X on the calendar, the X should be up on the egg.

I am hoping the turkey hens will lay a full cycle.  This could be 30 + eggs each!  She will gradually lay later and later each day and then stop for 2 -3 days.  He said I might think she's quit laying, but she will start up again and lay about 12 more.  If I want to, I can let her have the last batch and see if she will raise them by herself.  The others I can put under a brood hen (if I have one by then) or put them in an incubator.  A brood hen is one that gets "clucky".  She's wanting to sit on a nest.  She won't be able to sit on as many turkey eggs as she would chicken eggs, because they are bigger and the outside eggs won't stay warm.

I will keep you posted on the turkey egg numbers!

Here's a close up of one!