Poultry

Yesterday we got a call from my sister-in-law's dad saying he had found an abandoned turkey nest with two chicks in it. My dad and brother hurried over there and found not two, but SIX tiny baby turkeys huddled down in a hole in the middle of Bill's field. Since we recently graduated our fresh batch of chicks from their brooder to the coops, we had the perfect set-up to bring the little chicks home! They are really young - you can tell by the fact that each one still has a tiny egg tooth on the tip of its beak (those usually fall off a week or so after they hatch). And they are definitely wild. Whereas our baby chickens have been handled since the day they hatched and are pretty used to being around people, these guys have probably never even seen humans before. Whenever we go to the brooder to peek in at them, they immediately freak out and run around cheeping and crashing into each other, then all go to a separate corner and jam their heads down like little ostriches putting their heads in the proverbial sand. It reminds me of playing hide-and-seek with really young kids who think that if they just close their eyes you won't be able to find them. Here they are in their corner:

And since I already had sawdust on my camera, I figured I should take you on a mini tour of the other chickens that fill my life. This is one of Crazy White Hen's chicks - we successfully moved them from the barn attic to their own private space where they can enjoy fresh air and sunshine. She is a good mama and actually pretty trusting of the kids and me even though she is still pretty wild. She lets us get really close to her babies as long as we don't try to touch them. They are curious little guys - this one was playing peek-a-boo with me from the other side of his feeder.

And then there are our adolescent hens - these are the ones we mail-ordered a few months ago. They have passed through their ugly phase and are now little versions of the hens they will grow up to be. This year I put my foot down and insisted on naming some of them myself (I finally got tired of my animals being named after male basketball players and Lego Ninjas). This is Fiona - she's my favorite (don't tell the others). Annie and Buffy proved too difficult to photograph.

Here's Flapjack (I obviously lost the name battle on that one). I actually can't believe I just wrote an entire blog post about chickens - I used to hate chickens and thought it was just plain weird to get attached to them. But here I am - now who's the weirdo?