Turkey Season On The Homestead

Turkey Season On The Homestead

It’s turkey season on the homestead. Not in the way that most of you would assume I mean when I say it’s turkey season, although if I remember correctly it is also turkey hunting season. No, the reason why it’s turkey season on the farm right now is because we have oodles and caboodles of baby turkeys called poults hatching.

Just about a week ago, as a matter of fact, we had a clutch hatch. Unfortunately for them, since they were being hatched in an incubator,and they had already incubated in the egg for a while, we incorrectly guessed how fresh their eggs were.

So, our poor poults hatched out a few days ahead of when we expected, and went splat on the floor of the incubator. Don’t worry, they weren’t hurt. However, the floor of the incubator is slick. So, these poor babies were unable to get their legs under them to learn how to walk and ended up splay legged.

In the past, we always used to have to destroy splay legged babies. But then we learned a trick. Hobbling! Yup! Very similarly to how you would hobble a horse only there are two hobbles per poult rather than just one. We will be sharing in our turkey course exactly how we put them on. Actually, these youngsters are featured in a video showing exactly what we do to fix splay legs in very young turkeys. They are all looking great a week later and no longer have their hobbles on.