Wow! Look who just showed up on our property today: four starving, badly abused turkeys. They came to the right place, poor things.
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Glad you came to visit!
Got something to say? Email me at fastweedpuller at gmail dot com.Wisdom from the sage
Wendell Berry:
"We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it."
--from an essay in "The Long-Legged House""The word agriculture, after all, does not mean "agriscience," much less "agribusiness." It means "cultivation of land." And cultivation is at the root of the sense both of culture and of cult. The ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in culture. And these words all come from an Indo-European root meaning both "to revolve" and "to dwell." To live, to survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship, all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle. It is only by understanding the cultural complexity and largeness of the concept of agriculture that we can see the threatening diminishments implied by the term "agribusiness."
"Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating."
--both the above are from essays in "The Art of the Commonplace: Agrarian Essays"Is this so hard to believe?
"An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor, or Ba'al, or The Golden Calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further," Richard Dawkins, 2002.
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fast grow the weeds 
Showed up?!? Like, we’ve run away and need a new home, or like, we got tossed out a car window cuz your place looked like a good drop off place, or like, we’ve got some abused turkeys, can you take them?
Wow. So….do you eat abused and starving turkeys once you fatten them up? (just askin’)
Hey! Where’d that smiley face come from?
Those are some very sad looking little guys.
Hah! I looked up from my computer over to the turkey/goose pen and there they were, walking around outside it. Like, what? I have no idea if they were dropped off or if they were out just running around. I think the latter. The girl (white bird) has a huge chunk of wing gone, one of the boys has broken feet, and all four are filthy and skinny and hungry. They are now in with the chickens (as that was the easiest place to herd them into) and yep, I have no idea what we plan on doing with these gobblers. Can’t let them starve and run around wild though.
there’s gonna be a turf war if you keep them.
(and i know you will!)
That’s just crazy!
Are they friendly?
How does someone lose a tiny flock of turkeys? I don’t think I would put them in with my peeps for a few days if I were you. I’m a worrier though.
Gigi (hi!): Well, everyone seems very happy so far. The turkeys, the guineas, a couple of egg hens and all of the baby meat birds are all lying happily under the lilac bush right now. And it’s not a big bush.
Jules, it IS crazy. They seem friendly (i.e., they didn’t charge me or the kid) and they recognized the food bowl as food. They seem kinda skittish but no more so than all the other birds.
Pamela, yeah, like I said, we simply herded them in there. We have enough space to put them in their own pen and that is the plan. For now, though, I figure they need to take five and eat some grub, and give themselves a preen.
What do you do with broken feet? Sounds awful. Looks like they found the right place to run away to!
How crazy! I hope they mend well!
That is crazy! I bet the noises from your birds attracted them–smart turkeys! I wonder if their original owner let them go intentionally, or if there was some sort of attack/mishap that let them escape? They must have been on the loose for a while based on the rough shape they are in. And I love it that they stuck together in their little flock!
The whole thing sounds like the plot to a kids’ movie. I vote that Gilbert Gottfried does the voice of the wisecracking sidekick turkey.
You must have one of those special hobo marks on your doorjamb, that only birds can read.
“Nice house. Nice lady. Good food.”
OMG Imagine that!
zomg, that’s a hungry looking group. It’s as if they’re standing on a street corner asking passersby for a quarter.
Well there’s something you don’t see every day. huh. How DO you ever sold a mystery like this?
Out at my mother’s farm, one of the neighbors keeps one turkey to call in the wild ones for hunting. So whatever happened to these little guys, they heard the call of your other birds and came. I couldn’t imagine what they have been through to end up so hurt. Good thing they found you.
Thanks, all!
Turkey update: They had a fine afternoon and slept last night in the coop. This morning, Fran (the girl, named after my mom, whose birthday it was yesterday when they showed up) was bleeding a bit from her wing, so Tom and I took her out and cleaned her up. Wow, is she the sweetest thing. Getting sprayed with a hose and putting up with a washcloth and antiseptic can’t be too pleasant. Look at your arm: most vertebrates have the same structure: upper arm, elbow, lower arm, wrist, hand. Imagine missing everything lower than your elbow, and you have Fran, and the wound is fairly fresh. That she’s still alive after that is kind of miraculous. The boy with broken feet seems to be doing okay; he’s had them awhile, it would appear.
The boys made their display at each other this morning. They’re old enough to have hormones flowing: I would say the youngest they were was probably 4 months. Anyway, you have never seen such a pathetic trio of tom turkeys!
Andrea: I don’t know. He kind of limps along.
Daisy: cross your fingers! They do seem to eat well 😉
Meg: I think they were kicked out, maybe. Their feathers are in such rough shape; either they were in really tight quarters or they have been on the road a while. And I swear aren’t all kids’ movies scrappy travel narratives? boo-ring. Oh yeah I have a kid and only let her watch movies if I am with her…sorry for the editorial.
CC: Yes, it is clear, and it indeed must say “bird” because Pigeon has come back with a girlfriend. This is good because he looked lonely and our daughter said “Pigeon needs a girlfriend.” He must have heard her.
Laurie, I know! I thought it was the geese out on the lam! Big surprise.
Kelly! How funny. Seriously, you should see their feathers and skinny-assed selves. A cup and a pathetic gobble and yep I would hand over my change.
Robin, it’s so weird. It took my brain about 30 seconds to go from “we gotta get these birds back to where they came from” to assessing their sad shape to “well they’re our birds now I guess.”
Phelan, yep, it’s a mystery. Especially if they heard our baby turkeys: the little guys just barely peep, and the geese are pretty quiet too other than their little talk-to-each-other noise. I have only seen one bunch of wild turkeys, a few miles from my house, too (thought they would be more common, it’s so wooded here) but get this: the only flock of wild-ish birds we do see are a flock of peacocks that’ve gone wild. Now THERE is a weird bird call.
Strange! Kind of reminds me of the bear attack that Jamie (10signslikethis) suffered last year. Her birds were pretty badly mauled and roaming the neighborhood. They found most of them…. maybe the rest wandered up your way? 😉
The fact that they are on the friendly side makes me think they once belonged to someone.
I was wondering the same thing as Liz. Perhaps someone near you had turkeys and a predator took of some of their flock and the rest escaped. They may not even know their birds are still alive.
wow! I missed all the action yesterday : ). Our neighbor’s cows showed up one day – the small bull kicked the mrs. on the knee and I had to call the neighbor to come and get them. I wish they would just stay though. They were CUTE: ).
My feed store person warns me againts putting turkeys with chickens. Chickens pick up something from Turkeys (?). So – you might want to find them a separate pen. I know peacocks pick up “blackhead” from chickens and so they cant be raised together either.
anyway – all the best with them.
Thanks, Liz and Angie. I thought the same thing so I did the most logical thing I could think of: I asked our mail lady if she 1. knew of anyone else with turkeys and 2. if she knew of anyone who’d either ditch them or maybe has had something bad happen. (I know of at least two idiots who have something like 50 birds in something the size of a small dog run.) She is going to ask around at the post office for us.
WF: Thanks. Yep; knew about blackspot but have to get the new run ready for them so…for today/tomorrow, they’re in with the chix.
the poor dears, their condition is heartbreaking but I’m so glad they found you….they knew where to go 🙂