Day 18 - Raising Turkeys

Heather's three original turkeys were hatched and raised by her chickens. They actually hatched shortly after the devastating Christchurch earthquake in February.  They are all female and Heather named them after three suburbs of Christchurch that were completely destroyed by the earthquake, Bexley, Brighton and Bromley Here are pictures of the turkeys as they appeared back in the middle of March.

Now, seven months later, Bromley has made a nest for herself in a pile of brush in the yard, outside of the chicken/turkey enclosure and has laid a clutch of 9 eggs.  Yesterday morning when we opened the enclosure she went directly to the nest and sat on the eggs.  She has not moved from there since.  Unfortunately,since she has not been exposed to a male turkey, the eggs are not fertile.  But fortunately, Heather had just ordered fertilized turkey eggs and they were delivered today.

 So this afternoon Heather managed to remove all but one of the unfertilized eggs and replace them with the fertilized ones.

If you click on the picture and blow it up to full size you can see Bromley giving Heather the evil eye!  So hopefully, in 28 days we will have more baby turkeys (poults) running around the yard!


Heather and I painted like demons today and got the first coat of paint on both Mike's office and the master bedroom, and Heather filled all the nail holes in the base board moldings in most of the rooms in the house.  Tomorrow we (I) will do the first coat of ceiling paint in Mike's office and (if I can still lift my arms) in the master bedroom.  Also, the drain layer is coming out tomorrow to hook up the drains from the Wee Mansion and the house to the water treatment system.  Yeah!!


That's it for tonight.  I plan to post progress pictures of the house tomorrow.