It must be Spring as the forsythia has started to bloom! No more new turkey chicks from our eggs but we expect 15 chicks by mail this week. Good to have a plan B in place. We have 4 turkey hens sitting on various nests throughout the property and lots of eggs so we'll look for more babies in 3 or 4 weeks before the predators find them.
We have 6 roosters and that's way too many for our flock of chickens. Several weeks ago we separated out 3 of the Golden Nugget roosters and penned them up thinking we'd butcher them. Roosters tend to have favorite hens and will leave all the others alone. They wear the feathers right off the girls backs with too many mounts in mating. But we changed our minds about butchering, at least for now as I read about a farmer who said he rotated roosters so that some hens would get a rest and others would become favorites. That makes sense to me so we let out the condemned and penned up the boys who have "sown their wild oats."
Mixing up the crowd always has an interesting affect because the pecking order changes and has to be reestablished. The Golden Nuggets didn't challenge each other while the three of them were penned up, but they felt a burning desire to fight it out once they were free. Hackles went up and the double-dare-you dance began. Once they'd figured that out, the turkey tom and top turkey hen had to get in on the act. I'd forgotten that these roosters never had an ego problem as they would try to mount the turkey hens who were not having any of that!
So we've had a little barnyard drama this afternoon watching pecking orders get back in line. While the drama is more immediate on the farm, this reminds me of a number of offices I've worked in. Change one team member and all the team dynamics change. There are lots of lessons on the farm that can be applied to people situations. In fact, I once considered writing a Management book using barnyard examples. One time I went out to the chicken coup with dried corn on the cob and stood in the yard popping off the corn kernels. There was this one hen who decided all the corn was her's and she spent so much time defending her territory that she never did get to enjoy the corn. I managed an employee who was just like that - he spent so much time documenting and defending his position that he never really enjoyed the work.
I doubt that book would be a best seller but no matter how sophisticated or modern we think we are, the basic lessons of life are still reflected in the simplest things. Or maybe what I think of as simple is really a miracle as certain laws of nature seem to consistently repeat throughout our universe.
Rotating the roosters sounds like an excellent idea! But having the chickens and turkeys sharing the same place is supposed to be a no-no; chickens carry diseases than turkeys are susceptible to, especially blackhead. If you're having no problems, it's probably OK, but I think I'd separate them, particularly if birds are being added from outside your own flocks.
ReplyDeleteWrite the book! I've noticed that many child rearing books have application to employee management; perhaps you could do a companion volume on Family management/child rearing. I think it's all People Management and the principles are the same:)
I've read that too. We don't mix chickens and turkeys while they little but we've raised them together as adults for years without any problems. I have my own theories as to why it works for us but I'm no expert. They're in the same area but are free range so they are also separate. They come together sometimes but mostly leave each other alone - except when teen-aged roosters with gigantic egos and lots of testosterone get the idea they can mount whatever they can catch!
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