To make a very long story short, while having our pond dug our friend stirred up a turkey sitting on a nest of seven eggs. It was right where he was digging, so we decided to take the eggs home and incubate them.
We did everything by the book, temperature, humidity, stopped rotating them prior to hatching…EVERYTHING. One hatched no problem, one hatched and never stood a chance. The girls named turkey number one, Lilly. Aspen spent hours with this little bird. She was adorable, seemed fairly hardy, and also lonely.
On Randy’s way home from work on day four of Lilly’s life he stopped and picked up the minimum required five chicks, Isa Browns, and TSC. That night Lilly and her five chicks were curled up sweetly sleeping. The next morning I awoke to find Lilly had died in the night. All we can come up with is at one point the previous day Lilly had gotten herself lodged in her water dish and possibly dropped her body temperature enough to where she couldn’t recover? We really have no idea.
All we know is that we had the most heartbroken little girl that morning when she woke up to find that her pet wild turkey had died. We’ve lost dogs, cats, pet sheep, an incredible guard llama and never has she been so upset. She loves animals and for some reason, losing this little bird was her breaking point.
So now we have five little Isa Brown (whatever that is) chickens stinking up Randy’s shop in a cute little brooder Randy whipped up for them in a day.
The are just as cute as they can be and the beginning of our restoration of our homestead. More on that later, but for now, our laying hen flock is growing ever so slowly.
Our little farm just keeps growing and getting restored from our 5 year hiatus.
A Simple Prairie Life 