Turkeys Are Cool

I bought turkeys. Why? Because they were at the store when I went to buy a bigger waterer for the chicks I bought back before Easter. That's why. I'm an impulse buyer of poultry. Wal-Mart wants me to buy shit I don't need while waiting to check out? They should put birds next to the Snickers bars.

Also, I'd been considering getting turkeys for a few months now.

That's two of the poults in the photo above. If you're not a bumpkin or at least not any good at Trivial Pursuit, a poult is a baby turkey. The one in the foreground is a blue or slate. The one in the background is a bronze, which is what you probably think of when you think of turkeys, as long as you don't think about the giant white ones in the factory farms. I hate white poultry. I'm serious about that. I'm a bird racist.

I bought a total of six poults. Two of the blues, two blacks, a buff and the bronze. Normally, people eat turkeys. These are probably fairly safe from that fate. There is the possibility that I'll end up with excessive males and some will end up in the freezer, but I currently have three roosters for my three hens, so you can probably guess how this will end up. I'd have starved as a subsistence farmer, but then again, so would have my grandfather who actually nursed a bull with a broken leg back to health, so I probably would have never been born anyway.

Also, turkeys are cooler than chickens, at least these poults are. Normally, when I get chicks, they scatter every time I get near, at least until they get full grown and realize that I'm totally awesome and not a monster at all. Transferring them to the larger pens when they outgrow the the brooder pen is a chore because they're scrambling for their lives even though I am their sole provider and protector. Chicks don't bite the hand that feeds. They flee in terror from it. They're a lot like religious fundamentalists that way. I'm sure if they had the cognitive capacity I could have them create a society that persecuted anyone I felt like having them persecute.

The poults are the exact opposite. When I walk out into the carport, they actually come toward me, sticking their heads out of the pen, and they'll even let me pet them through the bars. Catching them basically involves picking them up. They show no fear. I'm starting to think that turkeys are the only truly domesticated bird because that's a great way to get eaten in the wild. It's going to be a little weird when I've got a half dozen 30-40 pound birds following me around the yard like a bald-but-feathery cult. I'll be able to command them to do my bidding... As long as my bidding involves them wandering around eating things off the ground.