During my asparagus and morel hunting I got about six feet from a turkey before I noticed it hiding. A couple seconds later it burst away. I counted 11 eggs from that distance. They’re slightly larger than eggs in the store and have a light brownish hue. The eggs are in a circle two feet in diameter that is a shallow depression in the soil.
The sandhill crane pair was back this morning. For a month only one has been around at a time. They like a section of marsh about sixty feet from the house. Three blackbird nests must be in the same area, because I see three attacking the crane everytime.
Down on my brother’s “farm”, we have Tank and Tina Turkey. Unfortunately, a damn fox got a hold of Tina a few days ago while she was sitting on her clutch of eggs.
However, some of the other farm birds (no, not my daughter) immediately hopped over and began filling in for her.
Those chickens are in for a bit of a surprise when they get a load of “their chicks”.
The ground even in the low lands is dry and morels are not plentiful.
Nice pictures. I didn’t know that wild turkeys could be raised by people without a game farm license. Do you have one or are the rules different in your state?
I found 6 turkey feathers yesterday, where I figure a fight ensued. I might use them to replace feathers falling apart in my dream catcher. It was authentic with certificate from the tribe that made it, but I can’t claim that if I replace the bad feathers.
We stopped by my brother’s place while visiting mom this weekend, and while he didn’t have any of Tank’s feathers, he did give me a bunch of ones that Tina had dropped awhile back. I’ve got five or six of them that are yours if you want them.
E-mail me your address (mine’s in the profile) and I’ll get them out to you.
Aren’t they cute? We saw a mama and about a dozen turkey chicks crossing the road when we were up in the mountains last weekend. (They didn’t say why.)
My apologies, Harmonious Discord – I completely missed your question the first time around.
I’m not certain if any license is needed, but I have my doubts. I’ll have to ask my brother this weekend.
The original couple, Tank and Tina, were actually from the local animal shelter. They have my brother and his wife on speed dial, because they know they can foist any unusual animals off on them that happen to be brought into the shelter.
I had hoped to get a picture. The truck was broke down for 10 days so I didn’t get to hunt morels or snap a picture. I thought I could get a picture of the hatchlings. No, somebody left the camera 60 miles away. This is one of those missed opportunities I’ll think of occassionaly for years.
The friends with the greenhouse had a female dog that wasn’t fully grown yet, and never was pregnant. She started feeding a kitten, that hung around her. She was producing milk too, so here’s an example of stimulated milk production.
Somehow, that doesn’t really surprise me. It’s been a dozen years since we last had chicks, but from what I remember of going to Agway as a kid, the turkey chicks look a lot like, um, chicken-chicks when they’re really little. So much so that people (who clearly didn’t pay attention to signage) ocassionally had to be convinced away from buying baby turkeys instead of the chicks they intended to purchase.
