TURKEYS
Turkeys have to be our favorite barnyard fowl. We’ve had these engaging birds on and off since around 2015, having started while living in the suburbs with Midget Whites (a smaller white turkey originally bred decades ago to meet a demand for smaller meat birds.) After moving to our little farm, a neighbor gave us a pair of turkeys, the tom being black and the hen a dark chocolate. Deciding to add a bit of color to our small flock, we purchased a “Breeders Choice” assortment from Porter’s Rare Heritage Turkeys and received a lovely selection of colors. A few years later, we gained Biggie, a broad breast bronze hen who has beat the odds of her breed and is in her third year, having survived a gruelingly hot summer. Broad breasted birds tend to live relatively short lives due to the way they develop in order to get to market size in the shortest time possible. They put on weight/size rapidly and as they get older, can get so large that they have problems moving. Biggie lives with the rest of our flock, and they keep her moving about. We are hoping to use Miss Biggie to breed a bit more “breast” into our flock.
GEESE
Geese would have tie with or come in as close second to turkeys as our favorite barnyard fowl despite their inherent displeasure with pretty much everything. We always know if something or someone is on or near the property, and their eggs are our absolute favorite for cooking. We started with a pair of Cotton Patch geese (a smallish breed used for weeding cotton and other crops prior to the advents of herbicides) but lost the gander before the pair laid any eggs. Not being able to locate another Cotton Patch gander to keep the lonely Sally company, we secured the companionship of a female African mix that we named Lucy. The folks we got Lucy from later gave us Lucy’s five other siblings, all female. Without a gander in site, we purchased two; a Cotton Patch for Sally and an Embden for the other ladies. Along the way we gained a Chinese gander. At this time we are investigating the possibility of switching over our flock to Sebastopol.