This is an exciting day here at the farm. For the first time ever, we have had a turkey poult (a poult is a baby turkey for all you city slickers) hatched the old-fashioned way. Usually, we have to take the eggs once the hens start to sit on them and put them in an incubator.
We do this because the hens don’t tend to sit for long and the egg-to-hatchling ratio is virtually nothing in the outdoor pens. And when they lay and sit outside the pen, they are easy prey for the fox.
So as an experiment, we let the turkeys sit on their eggs once they started to lay (AND STAY) in the the enclosure. We kept the hens in the pen and they seemed to really be minding their task.
And this morning, I went out to see the turkeys with my niece and nephew and we checked on the birds. At first, nothing…
And then…what is that tiny thing eyeballing us next to that Bourbon Red hen??
A small bird! A POULT!! Amazing how Mother Nature can surprise you. Born to a hen that was hatched from an incubator, this chick proved that nature wins out!
A real farm moment.
Then over to the pigs to complete the tour. The boars are holding tight in their posh surroundings ’til called back for duty. Here is an Ossabaw boar atop his ‘throne’ of hay.
Next to him is Oscar, our Berkshire boar, chilling out in his wallow. We are wallow-crazy with the heat setting in.
They are in no rush to move, unlike the sows over in the adjacent pasture. It’s ‘go time’ with all these piglets underfoot! These piglets may look tranquil, but they all ran out of the hut squealing as soon as I snapped this picture…
right to their mom, who looked at me as if I’d given her piglets a shot of espresso. A mother’s work just never ends.
The other piglets were wandering around the woods, rooting and sunning and scratching. The usual routine.
We will be having a farm tour either this month or next where you can see all these little guys. I will be posting on the website when we plan on the tour. Hope to meet some of you then!
