Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

We are delighted to report that Katherine is doing a great job of looking after her seven turkey chicks. She is keeping them warm and encouraging them to eat and drink and they all seem to be thriving. They are currently in quite a small area which is helping her to bond with them and not to 'forget' they are there. We will move her to a bigger area in a few days and then the plan is to get her outside with them, but possibly to restrict their space so neither she nor they can wander off too far!!
This is all very different to having a broody chicken with chicks where all we do is ensure they have a place to sleep at night, and food and water close by and simply let 'mum' get on with it. Our lovely bantam who is raising four chicks has only ever 'lost' one chick once and it was not for long... She had obviously come into the barn and then gone back out again one afternoon, and unfortunately one chick did not keep up and so got left. We heard its plaintive cheeps as we were walking down our path - they were incredibly loud - and were able to reunite mother and chick before the chick got cold or any more stressed!!
As explained on 19th March, our experience (and that of other breeders we know) is that turkeys can be somewhat absent-minded when it comes to remembering they have a few chicks to look after and are likely to 'lose' their chicks a lot if simply allowed to free range with them as our chickens do. This is why we are 'helping' Katherine as much as possible to get it right. If we simply put her in the poultry paddock with her brood, we fear she might wander off, or tread on them or not teach them where the food and water is.
It is going to be fascinating to see how these seven develop compared to the fifteen we are raising under a heat lamp. The pictures below are of two of the fifteen - they are now two and a half weeks old. We mentioned on 1st May that 'chicken' chicks raised under a heat lamp tend to grow faster than those being raised under a broody and often their feathering can be a tad scrappy because of this. We wonder if this will be the same with the turkeys. In the photos below the feathering on the white turkey is looking a little bare and certainly some of the feathers are not quite as 'neat' as they might be. You can also see there is quite a distinct gap between the primary and secondary feathers on the bird in the last photo. We will photograph a chick from Katherine's brood when they are two and a half weeks old and compare. We wonder what we will find!!