Archive for category Blue Feather Blog

Last Saturday, my son, my daughter, and granddaughter all came over to help decorate the “real” Christmas tree.  Since the back half of our property is sand, we grow our own.  We all hiked back to the field and looked this year’s selection over.   Hubby climbed under the branches and sawed off the tree while Son held it up to keep it from falling.  Son hauled it up to the house, with the assistance of his 4 year old niece, who had a death grasp on the very end of one branch, “helping”.

After a good deal of pruning, drilling, grunting and groaning, the tree finally made it into the stand and just barely through the French doors of the conservatory.  It was a big tree!   The ladder was fetched and the lights and angel were placed, at which point Hubby decided it was getting crowded with all of us in there and fled to do chores.

He came through the back door some time later, calling my name in that ominous tone of voice that I’ve learned means nothing good is up.  I ran to meet him and found him with one of the late summer turkeys in his arms, with a fair amount of blood on it.

This seemed to the be very same turkey he had found upside down between two of the feed barrels the week before – cold as ice and at first taken for dead.  He had brought the bird in that day calling out in the same tone of voice, but after we’d gotten the bird warmed up, it seemed fine and we’d put it back in the barn with the others.

Investigation of the bloody bird revealed it may have been picking at it’s own foot, and the was joined in by the others.  There was a deep puncture wound, but all the scales surrounding that area had either fallen off or pecked off.  There was a dark, swollen area on the other foot as well.

As anyone who had ever had poultry knows, getting a bird to stop bleeding is no easy task.  A hunt for the blood stop powder ensued, as Hubby, Son, and Daughter took turns holding the bird and putting pressure on the wound, and a fascinated 4 year old looked on.  After a good rummage through the “vet” box, the powder was found, and some vet wrap, gauze and triple antibiotic was rounded up as well.

Once the bleeding had stopped, we put antibiotic cream on the area missing the scales and added a layer of gauze topped by the vet wrap to keep it all in place.  We washed the blood off its feathers and beak and set it down on the floor of the conservatory to see if it would be able to walk with the bandage.  Success!  It seemed to be a little wobbly at first, but then appeared to be doing OK.

That was when our elderly, arthritic cat George decided that he thought he probably couldcatch THIS bird.  My son saw George streaking across the floor, belly dragging he was crouching so low, dove to grab him and missed.  Hubby saw him and yelled  just as he launched himself airborne, thinking he was finally going to catch himself a bird.  George has learned from long experience that when Hubby yells in that particular tone of voice – he’s in trouble – so he veered off to the side, landing in a heap with a disgruntled look on his furry face.

Of course, the turkey may have had a sore foot, but there was nothing wrong with its sense of self-preservation, so it gave a squawk and attempted to both go behind and up the Christmas tree.  All this was punctuated by a series of ear-piercing screams of the kind only a 4 year old girl can produce.

Hubby requested the screaming stop, Son grabbed the cat and took him for a “time out” as the granddaughter aptly put it. and the bird was hauled out from behind the tree.  It was put in with my 5 “mid-life crisis” chickens, who still have a heat lamp in their barn, and after a good laugh, the decorating re-commenced.

A couple of days later, the bird went back in with the rest of the turkeys and it’s foot seems to be healing.  I do wonder, however, if anyone will believe my granddaughter when she tells the story of Christmas tree decorating with a turkey at MiMa and Poppi’s house someday in the future.

Merry Christmas to one and all from cold and snowy Michigan.  May you all have good friends, good food and good health over the holidays.

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve blogged!  We’ve had an unusual fine fall and I’ve been madly trying to get the garden beds all tidy and neat for spring.  Unfortunately, most of the fine days were days I was working.  Still, I managed to get most of it done, good thing, as we’ve 3 inches of snow here today.

We’ve just had our big “family” holiday here in the States, Thanksgiving.  It’s more likely you’ll be with extended family on Thanksgiving here than on Christmas.  The traditional menu is Turkey, with stuffing, mashed potatoes, squash, and cranberry sauce.  All other dishes are optional, but those are required

We had a beautiful Heritage Blue Slate Tom, who, since he wasn’t the only one I had, was expendable.  We debated for a month or two which of them would become Thanksgiving dinner.  After “Tough Guy”, as my husband called him, started showing aggression towards our 3 year old granddaughter, the selection process was easy.

But I was worried that “Tough Guy” would be just that — tough!  He was nearly a year and a half old, and had been a very active breeder.  I feared we would be eating something the consistency of shoe leather.  Still, we needed to cull him anyway, the sure way to get butchered here is to get aggressive with the little one.  So, when I had my broiler birds butchered, we had him butcher Tough Guy as well and put him in the deep freeze to await Thanksgiving.  When he weighed in at 20 pounds, I knew I had a challenge on my hands!

I decided one way to tenderize “Tough Guy” would be to brine him.  But last year, when I attempted to brine an “all natural” turkey from the store, it was way too salty.  I decided on a very light brine, with 1 cup of salt, 1 cup of natural sugar, and a goodly bit of thyme, with a couple gallons of water.  The only thing I had big enough to soak him in was a cooler, so I scrubbed and bleached one out and plopped him in overnight.

It became crystal clear looking at him in the cooler, that nothing but the turkey would fit in the oven the next day!  I was up until midnight, baking the stuffing and squash, then setting them overnight in sealed dishes in the garage to keep them cold (it was 2 degrees C).  The next day, the squash would go into the microwave to reheat and the stuffing would go into the Advantium oven (it uses high intensity light to cook, so browns wonderfully).

Looking on the internet for tips, I found no one agreed on how to properly cook these birds.  Some wanted hot and brief, others suggested cooler temps for longer times.  Tented?  Untented?  Good grief!  The only thing everyone agreed on was not to put the stuffing in, as it wouldn’t cook as fast as the bird.

I finally settled on separating the skin from the bird and smearing the bird with butter, putting it upside down in the rack.  I gave it an initial blast for 1/2 hour in a hot oven, then cooled the temperature for another hour.  It was almost done at that point, so it got rotated breast up and had another blast of hot temperature to brown up the skin on the breast.  At that point, my meat thermometer said the bird was done!  But since we were over an hour away from eating, I tented the bird with foil, and put him back in the oven on warm only, and crossed my fingers he wouldn’t dry out.

He was beautiful and brown when he came from the oven, but I still worried if he would be edible.  He was not only edible, he was delicious!  The only disappointment was that the very deep brown skin was tough, a shame, as I dearly love nicely brown skin.  The meat, however, was truly lovely.  There was much less breast meat than from one of the hybrid birds, but it was juicy and tender and full of flavor.

The dark meat was very dark, and I was concerned no one would want to eat it.  No problem, it was the best tasting dark meat any of us had ever eaten.  Even my Hubby, who normally won’t eat dark meat from any poultry, ate large amounts of the after-Thanksgiving turkey dishes we ate for the next few days, before I vacuum sealed the rest for the freezer.  I believe the only thing I might have changed was to put a bit more salt in the brine, as he could have used a bit more salt.

I was delighted with this, our first home grown heritage turkey.  I can’t wait until spring, when we can butcher out some of our fall hatched birds – as I’m sure there are several more Toms than we need.  If “Tough Guy” was this tender and juicy, the younger birds should be a real taste treat!

This is what we’ve affectionately dubbed “The Three Ring Circus”.  All noise and there’s always something fun to watch!  They’re our 7 (one is far behind the others in the photo) 7-week old turkey poults.  They were all eggs from my Lavender Blue Slate Hen, and in the photo there are 3 Lavender, 1 Blue Slate (the one bringing up the rear) and a pair of Bourbon Red crosses.

We’ve been having seriously beautiful fall weather – very unlike our usual miserable cold rainy stuff, and the young birds have been partying and checking things out.  Everywhere.  All over the place. Including on Hubby’s antique tractor, which would have made a great pix if I’d have had the camera…  but Hubby was not so charmed! However… who could have forseen that 7 little birds could possibly make SO much noise?

They start out with constant curious trills, yes, all 7 of them, with questioning chirrups as they come upon anything interesting, which is every 20 seconds.  The noise is constant, we never need to look for them – all you need to do is listen!  If one gets separated, or if they feel threatened by one of the larger birds, get your earplugs out!  The panic shrieks are enough to set every nerve in your body on edge!   The sky is falling!  If they would shriek once and then get on with it, it might not be so bad.  But once they get going, each one seems to panic the others and it can take some ear-splitting minutes before they all return to the trilling.  It sounds like a bird massacre.

They do not make the Mama turkey warning sound, but they know it, to our surprise.  Since we’ve only had one poult raised by a Hen (and that one was sadly killed by a predator at about 3 weeks), we’d never heard the warning sound until recently.  Our Mama, Swan, with her 9 babes is on the other side of the shed that houses the Three Ring Circus.  We had the door open and Hubby was looking over the feeders and waterers when a few errant sparrows flew though the barn.  Swan made a very low trill, sending all her poults deep under her feathers.

What was startling was what happened with the Three Ring Circus.  They immediately “hit the dirt” in the best manner of movie war dramas everywhere.  They were as flat as could be, wings spread out and still as 7 little pancake statues.  Amazing.  These guys were hatched in a Brinsea, and had never been around a Mama Hen before Swan was on the other side of the barrier in the barn.  She’s not their Mama, in fact, she chases them if they wander near.  Still, their little brains knew that sound meant hide and flatten out!!  And folks say turkeys are dumb?

Sorry this photo is a bit faint, but I just had to post it anyway, as I’ve been trying to catch this for some days now.  I don’t know if this is common for turkeys, but Swan carried her last hatch (of one – shipped eggs) on her back like this for several weeks.  She’s been doing the same this time, although with NINE babies, there’s not room for them all!  We refer to it as turkey surfing, very funny to watch her walk around Yes, this is her baby, and it is a Blue Slate, but expressed as a Black Slate due to the complicated gene that carries the Blue Slate gene.

We’ve had a few very unseasonably warm days, so yesterday, they were allowed outside in a fenced area for a short while.  They’re only 2 weeks old, so we’re being very cautious.  

Here’s a photo of my Hubby’s latest project – a new add on shed (added to a barn made of recycled materials 20 some years ago) made again – with mostly recycled materials.  Long on function, short on looks.  We will paint in the spring, but will scrub off the mud before then!  The “window” is hardware cloth, and as you can see, we’ve already tacked up heavy plastic (which still needed to be trimmed when I took this photo) to keep out the snow and wind.  It’s about 3 meters by 2.7 meters, and we’re still trying to figure out which of the overflow will go into this barn soon.

The metal siding and roofing, the door, and about 1/2 of the lumber were recycled, so all we bought was a few studs, the hardware cloth, and the plastic, which we buy a huge roll of every other year to secure various sheds for the winter anyway.

Barns and sheds around here have always been made of what we can scrounge – so we have a pretty rag-tag bunch, funny, how 20-25 years ago, it wasn’t considered recycling – it was considered too poor to buy new! LOL  We prefer to say we were just ahead of our time.  :-)

I came home from work yesterday morning and went out to do chores.  Since Hubby had been gone, and I was at work, a friend had stopped by after she got home from work (already after dark here) to shut up the birds for the night.  As I went out into the fenced pen outside the turkey shed, I found 5 huddled and unhappy little 5 week old turkeys in the corner.  Seems they had flown over the gate sometime during the nice warm day, and had made their way outside.  Guess they couldn’t find their way back, so there they were, scared and cold.  After several difficult moments, during which they were sure I was out to do them harm!!, I got them all settled back into their part of the barn and under a heat lamp.  They attacked the food for several moments,got a good drink, then settled themselves under the heat lamp and took a good snooze.  Thanks goodness it was Tuesday night, which was warm and foggy but dry, and not last night, cold and rainy!

Yesterday was the payback for all the nice weather we’ve had.  Thunder and pouring rain went on for about 8 hours.  I had our granddaughter here, so we baked cookies — being asked every 10 minutes “Can we go see the baby turkeys yet?”  We had been to see the baby chicks upstairs in the brooder, but she wanted to see the turkeys.  It finally cleared in very late afternoon, so on our boots went, and we went and saw everyone.

The “grade school” turkeys, as she calls them, seemed no worse for their overnight outing, but I’ll keep a close eye on them for a few days.  Swan and her babies were just fine, and the granddaughter was very interested that some of them were black, not gray!  She wanted to go in and hold the babies SO bad, but Swan gave her the ‘evil eye’, and she decided she would just see them from the other side of the gate.  I don’t think Swan would have minded, but new poults are so fragile that as long as the other side of the gate was fine, I wasn’t going to push the issue!

The meat birds are doing — amazing? “They’re ROUND, Mima!”, as the observant 3 year old says.  And they are.  What else can you say?  In three weeks they’ll be ready to butcher.  The one who had a swollen leg seems to have healed, I can’t find anyone with issues now, and the count is correct.

We did have another problem with the one Tom racing up behind our little one as if to attack.  We had been considering if we wanted to butcher him, or the slightly smaller, less dominant tom for Thanksgiving.  Guess that clinches it.  Won’t have any animal that wants to attack small children (or adults, for that matter!) here.

Speaking of butchering, that’s on the agenda for the day again.  My friend that helps me butcher needs to do some of her old hens, so it will be a long day.  I have a better set up here, so she’ll bring the birds over later this morning and then take them and one of my pressure canners home and can them up.  I have two big pressure canners and one small one, so one of my big ones travels back and forth between our houses during canning season.  I found it at a charity sale a couple of years ago for a very cheap price, so sharing seems only right!

Can’t resist leaving you with one thing.  As we did evening chores last night, a mist was settling over everything.  The woods’ flaming colors were soft and muted in the damp, and the sky had ragged tatters of clouds edged in shades of pink and amber as the sun said good night. Walking down the hill from the checking the sheep, I watched my granddaughter in her lilac flowered hoodie happily prancing through the tall grass and mist towards the hen houses as the last of the birds wandered towards home.  I smiled and took a deep breath of the fresh, moist air, and thought, “This is what small farming is all about.”

The weather here has been unusually warm, sunny and lovely.  It’s been a blessing for us with all our young birds.  Yesterday was 24 or25C, so I allowed the 5 week old poults to roam and wander, and they took full advantage of the chance.  What a racket!!  If you can go by “mouth” there are definitely 5 toms and only 2 hens in the group.  And the 5 “mouthy” ones are larger and have larger heads…  They wandered a good quarter acre of the area, loudly announcing themselves alarmingly as they went.  After a couple of hours, I decided they’d had enough (or at least my ears had) and herded them back to the barn.

Swan and her babies are doing well, and it never fails to amuse me when she sits down and one or more poults climb up on her back.  Couldn’t get them to pose for a photo, but I’ll keep at it.  We have 9 babes, in an almost perfect Blue Slate result:  two lavenders, two black slates, five blue slates.  We had one dead babe and two eggs fail to hatch, pretty good for such a late clutch of eggs!

Even the broiler chix have been getting out of the barn – which gives me a chance to clean out the sodden straw without them underfoot.  They’re such dirty birds, but I suppose when all you do is eat and poo…  They don’t go far, and I haven’t seen a one take a peck at any nice green grass, but at least they’re out in the fresh air and sunshine.  Not at all like the Freedom Rangers I raised last year that descend from the French red label birds.

I’m a bit disappointed in my laying hens.  They should all be laying by now, and I’ve 29 or 30 birds, but I’m only getting 22-24 eggs a day!!  I’ve even got one RIR who is broody already at the ripe old age of 25 weeks!  She’s going in cage for a few days, and if she goes broody again soon, she’ll be chicken dinner, I think.  I’ve only 10 nest boxes, and her taking up space in one of them is no good when she’s producing nothing.

Even the sheep got out on the big pasture yesterday.   Had thought about it on Saturday when Hubby was here, but he wasn’t in favor of the idea thinking we’d be having to chase them (he’s still thinking they’re small cows?).  I was pretty sure all they would do is eat the nice long grass in the pasture, and sure enough, they came out, ate and ate, then put themselves back in their barn and small enclosure.

Spent an hour or two wading thru the undergrowth in the woods that surrounds us – putting up “no hunting – livestock area” signs.  We’ve not had any large animals in the pasture for many years, and I don’t want some overzealous deer hunter deciding my hair sheep look a lot like a deer!  Or, deciding that my heritage turkeys look a lot like wild turkeys!  We do plan on harvesting one of the excess toms for our own Thanksgiving dinner, but the rest are needed for breeding stock.

It was a glorious day to be in the woods, we’ve a lot of sugar maples, and their brilliant yellows, oranges and reds amidst the dark rust of the oak leaves and the lime of the osage orange leaves positively glowed in the bright sunshine.  The weatherman says we’re in for a couple of gloomy days with scattered showers next.  We need the rain, but I will miss the glorious colors in the sunshine.