Posts Tagged Winter

It is late winter here, when chores are easiest in the morning when the mud has frozen overnight on the paths Hubby plowed out to the barns.  On the days we get above freezing now, the top layer oozes and slides with the snow melt while the ground underneath remains frozen so the water has no where to go.  It’s beautiful now, piles of brilliant white glowing in the low, amber, early morning sun, intersected by the brown lines of the plow paths.  It’s still cold enough to freeze your nose and hands in the morning, but the bright sun, so lacking here in Michigan through most of the winter, makes your breath into sparkling wisps of fog as you climb the hill to the sheep barn, so enchanting they almost make you forget the ache in your fingers from the cold.  The days are longer already, and that sure sign of impending Spring in Michigan, the hideous odor of the skunks as they emerge from their winter sleep, has been punctuating the air the past few nights.

The turkeys are positive it’s Spring, and the Toms are all trying to out-do each other in how much strutting (and fighting) each can do.  The two oldest Toms, secure in their supremacy, strut around, but do not engage in the wars.  They are far too dignified for that.  Nor do they feel the need to impress me each and every time I walk through the gate to the back.  They know they’re magnificent.

The young ones, however, in the manner of young males of most species, feel the need to impress as much as possible, making it nearly impossible to walk through the yard!  They gather around me, fanning their tail feathers, puffing out their chests and spreading their wings.  Tu-ttt!  Tu-ttt!  Tu-ttt!  If I walk faster, they walk faster.  If I dash off the path to the snow, they half-fly to catch up with me.  Do you know how difficult it is to haul buckets, let alone a basket full of nice fresh eggs, when you’re tripping over turkeys every step?  It’s gotten so to get the chores done, I need to leave them in the barn until last!  I know I should be flattered, but I can do without quite so much adoration!  If you look carefully, you will see there are FOUR of these guys in the photo — I had to keep running away from them to get them far enough away to take the pix!

The hen turkeys, on the other hand, are SO over watching these guys try to impress them.  Several of them have been taking refuge in the hen house with the layers, and some of the others don’t want to go in the turkey barn at night at all.  We seem to have far more toms than hens, so who can blame them?

We plan on keeping only one or two of the best new Lavender toms for breeding next year, so we will have a large harvest this Spring, and we’re hoping that at least some folks will consider turkey for Easter dinner.  We’re way out of season with these birds, so we’re crossing our fingers we’ll be able to find buyers.  That will hopefully put an end to the nearly constant warfare going on out back.

We’ll keep most of the hens as breeders.  We never planned on having so many birds over the winter, it was one of those things that just sort of happened — we got the new incubator, and then Swan decided to set a large clutch last fall.  Never again – we’ve spent a fortune feeding over the winter, in the summer they eat so much natural feed that they’re much more economical to raise.

I know there will be some of you out there distressed that we raise these birds to eat, but only a few years ago they were on the critical list – almost wiped out, despite the fact that in the 1930′s they were one of the top breeds raised in this country.  The only way to keep the gene pool strong is to keep breeding and selling the birds, holding back the best birds and making sure to introduce genes from other flocks.  And so we do.  We will sell some as pairs this spring to folks who want to keep birds, and sell both hatching eggs and poults as they come available.  The more folks who keep these beautiful heritage birds, the better chance we have of making sure there will always be adoring males in the Spring.