Whilst we were delighting in the joys of seeing Mars yesterday, Katherine was having a slightly less than good day, or rather her poults were… Katherine has always been a great mum but yesterday the lure of the 4-acre field was obviously too much for her because within a couple of hours of being moved to the Collecting Area to join Victoria, Napoleon and their five poults, she had upped and escaped, squeezed under the gate and left her own three poults inside the Collecting Area house. At 4 days old, it did not take long for the cold to slowly start to shut them down. When we found she had abandoned them, they were unconscious, very chilled and barely breathing. We had this once before years ago when 15 turkey poults were left outside a house as it began to go dark, ‘mum’ having gone inside without them. Then, like now, we used the Rayburn (or Stanley in this house) to warm them back up. Then we lost not a single one.. Now we only managed to save one. It looked as though we had saved two out of the three but one had a very swollen wing which may have been the result of being stepped on (??) and so whilst s/he revived enough to show interest in food (as the photo shows), by the evening s/he was very weak again and died this morning!!! The remaining poult spent much of today with Jack, snuggled up in her jumper (photo number two) and wandering around on her desk. S/he had a fascination with the keyboard and Jack’s ring!! Turkeys do make great pets and raising a single one in this way would mean a VERY tame bird... but… as with all animals, they are best living with their own kind. We were therefore rather delighted to discover that one of the remaining dozen or so eggs under Elizabeth and Napoleona was pipping tonight and so tomorrow we expect to have a pal for our billy-no-mates. Depending on what the other eggs are doing, we will probably bring the new poult into the house to be with our original one and then see what else pips and over what time-scale before trying to get Katherine or Napoleona to look after these two and one or two more of a similar age. That will leave one turkey to hatch out the rest, expected hatch dates being towards the end of next week.. we think!!!
When on his/her own, our single poult was VERY loud and cheeped pretty much constantly. As soon as we brought her out of her box and heat lamp set up, she was quiet!! Funny that!!