Finally, turkey eggs are being incubated; hooray for surrogate moms!

Cochin banty hen with 1-day-old Midget White turk.

This year, for some reason our Midget White turkeys started laying eggs about a month later than usual, around mid-March. After losing two of our four breeding hens recently, we have been keeping close tabs on the surviving two and collecting their eggs. At this point, we have three broody chickens sitting on turkey eggs, and we just put one of the turkey hens on a clutch. We're still getting an egg almost every day from the remaining turkey hen, so we will save them up for a few days and then put her in a turkey brooder with her own clutch.

One of the many things we've learned in the course of breeding birds is that hatching eggs are dormant for about 6 days. This allows the hen to accumulate a clutch of eggs (since she doesn't lay more than one egg per day) before the actual incubation begins. Without this period of dormancy, the eggs would all hatch on different days. Our Midget White hens typically incubate between 12 and 18 eggs at a time, so obviously having them all hatch more or less on the same day is a good thing! There are sometimes late arrivals among the hatchlings, which may get left behind if the hen and other babies have already left the nest.

Cochin banty hen with Midget White turks.

One of our broody hens is a Cochin banty. The poor thing, all she wants to do in life is incubate eggs and raise babies. Because of her banty-esque size, she can only comfortably incubate 4 or 5 turkey eggs at a time, but I feel sorry for her when she's this broody, so I have her sitting on 4 of them. She successfully hatched and raised baby turks last year, too (see photo above).

Of course, in years when we've had more Midget White hens than we do right now, they have done a great job. They readily go broody, lay and incubate plenty of eggs, and are attentive and protective mothers.

 Midget White hen with some of her brood. 

Speaking of surrogate mothers, we have discovered that one of the hazards of letting all the birds free-range is that they sometimes lay eggs in some other bird's nest. Usually, when a hen is incubating a clutch of eggs, she hops off the nest for a few minutes every day, at least long enough to eat and drink something. (They also like to poop away from the nest.) Last year a Blue Swedish duck hatched 2 chicks; this was a little tricky because she was also incubating duck eggs, which incubate for 28 days (chicken eggs incubate for only 21). Fortunately, there was a broody hen available who happily adopted the orphans. Naturally, we called them Donald and Daisy.

Then there was the time when a Midget White turkey hatched and raised a chicken...

Midget White turkey with Barred Rock pullet she hatched and raised.

It's not always easy managing all these birds during breeding season, but we're learning every year and getting better at it. It's nice to know that so many of the hens don't mind sharing the mothering duties; it makes our lives easier, and sure makes for some interesting photos!

Two turkey hens lost to a cougar this week

Just a brief digression from my summary of the Premises of Pot Pies and Egg Money: This week we lost two of our four Midget White turkey hens to a cougar. The turkeys like to go a little ways out of the yard and lay their eggs in the thick stand of salal near the edge of the woods. For the past two years, they've always laid their eggs in one of two spots; this, along with their bright white coloring, made it easy to find them, and their eggs.

This year, things have changed. First, the hens have found three entirely new places to make their nests. We've finally located all of them, after literally hours of looking, but unfortunately in two cases, a cougar found the nests before we did. The pile of white feathers in the nest and the trail of more feathers leading to the edge of the canyon and down the steep slope make it clear what happened. (Although this is a smaller-sized turkey, even the hens are too large to be bothered by bobcats; even young cougars are much larger than bobcats.)

As distressing as it is to lose the hens, what added insult to injury was finding the remains of broken turkey eggs in the nests. We were hoping to find intact eggs that could be hatched under a broody hen . We've been keeping a close eye on the remaining hens, and collecting their eggs as quickly as possible. We've got only 7 so far. I'm going to set up one of the broody coops this afternoon and relocate a very broody chicken there to incubate the turkey eggs. The Midget White hens are very good broodies and mothers; however, since we only have two left, we want them to keep laying eggs for as long as possible (they quit laying once they go broody), so we'll use chickens to hatch the turkey eggs for now.

It's a bit disconcerting to think that an animal the size of a cougar (males can weigh up to 275 lbs) is coming so close during the day; the nests are all within less than 100 feet of the house. We've put up some temporary fencing in the area where the turkeys are nesting, and all has been quiet for the past couple of days. At this point, we're not even thinking about Thanksgiving; we're concerned about replenishing our breeding flock.

Grandparents again....

Yes, it's happened again: One our little Nankin bantam hens came out of the bushes yesterday with 3 chicks, which had clearly hatched quite recently. We were just getting into the car to run into town to do some errands when I thought I heard baby bird-like peeping nearby. It only took a minute to find the mama and babies; then David discovered the nest, which still had unhatched eggs in it! One of the eggs was pipped (the chick had broken a hole in it) and although the egg was a bit cool, we could see the chick was moving.

Fortunately I had just cleaned out one of the broody coops, and it had fresh straw in it. I went inside to get a feeder and drinker, while David started gathering up chicks and eggs. In just a few minutes, mama, babies and eggs were happily settled in a nest out of the rain and away from potential predators.

Chickens incubate their eggs for 21 days, so this hen had been outside in the bushes, with very little shelter from the weather, for 3 weeks. Normally hens will get up off the nest once a day; they prefer to poop away from the eggs, and also they like to get something to eat and drink every so often, and maybe take a quick dust bath. These little Nankins go broody quite frequently, and are very attentive and protective moms. They also seem to prefer to nest away from the coops, and they free-range all day, so it's not all that uncommon for one of them to show up with a brood of chicks.

We decided to just leave them be for a day or so, then we will check to see how many additonal chicks have hatched. As we recently sold some of our Nankins to the Oregon Zoo in Portland, we were thinking about hatching some more anyway. And as usual, the Nankins are a step ahead of us!