Temporary Turkey Mom

In my previous post, I introduced two wild turkey poults that had gotten separated from their mother and siblings. What to do with them? I couldn't leave them out for the hawks and raccoons.

The turkey poults ignored chick starter, both dry and soaked, no matter how I pecked at it with my finger and offered it up to them. So I scrounged a dish of mealworms from my ancient beetle bin and Nelly bar the door--the chicks fell to and the worms were gone in seconds. Wow! and whew. Feeding them is always the thing. I hoped they would pick up the chick starter mash with the worms, but they carefully shook the food off the worms before downing the live treats. They weren't dumb. They considered the commercial chick starter simply a kind of odiferous mud to be carefully shaken off their delicious mealworms. They pecked at but refused sowbugs and cucumber beetles, which were likely too armored and distateful, respectively, to bother with. Mealworms it would be.

Once they were fed I figured they might stop peeping. But they were cold in the air-conditioned house and they wanted their mama and the peeping continued, louder and more plaintive even than before. It was driving me to distraction. On an impulse I knelt down and gathered them up and held them under my neck, against my heart. This is something almost all women seem to do with young things. Women just know what to do with baby creatures; they scoop them up and snuggle them up under their chins, against the heart. And the poults' eyes closed and the peeping turned to a purr and their dear little heads drooped and they fell fast asleep.

So I called to the kids. "Get a good movie, sit down on the couch. You have a job to do." And I gave Phoebe one turkey and Liam the other and while the babies slept in their warm hands, I settled in to think about what I was going to do.

Truly, the only time they were quiet was when they were being cuddled. They obviously enjoyed it. When the kids would open their hands, the poults wouldn't jump out; they'd cuddle down closer. They felt safe next to a beating heart, no matter whose.

What a sweet family I am blessed with.

I fished out a 20 gallon long tank with a screened cover, found my reptile heat lamp and some aspen shavings and set them up in the living room. Young turkeys need to be warm--90 degrees or better--and they calmed down when they felt the soothing heat of the lamp. They calmed down a little. But they were still darned loud, trying to keep in touch with their mama, wherever she'd gone. Peep, PEEP PEEP? Peep, PEEP PEEP?

Repeat ad nauseum, until you want to leap out of your skin. I have an overactive maternal instinct, and I have to say it drove me NUTS to be unable to soothe them. It took me right back to Phoebe's colicky days, and Liam's ear infection years.


That's it, little turkeys. Go to sleep. Go to sleep.


Even though they dozed beneath the lamp, the only thing that truly soothed them was being cuddled, so the kids were happily busy and quietly hoping they could name them and keep them.

I made it clear that these turkeys were only on loan. No turkeys, thank you very much. I'd read enough to know that raising wild turkeys is a full-time job if they imprint on you as their mama. And I have a couple of those (full-time jobs).

Not only that, but if the turkeys get to thinking they're people, next spring you have a hen flopping down in front of you, tail raised in invitation, or (worse) an 18-pound gobbler trying to mate with your head.


A quiet moment, preening emerging wing feathers. Turkeys this young can fly a little! It's amazing.


I hit the Web, finding the Southeast Ohio Poultry Breeder's Association. And there I found a contact phone number for their annual poultry shows, and the kind woman I reached there found me a breeder of heirloom bronze turkeys--not the big, super-dumb white butterballs that are about the only commercial turkey raised, but turkeys that look and act more like turkeys ought to. Of course, they're rare as hen's teeth, but some people still raise them. And he lived not far from my house! So I called his cell phone and left a message for him and listened to the poults' peeping for four more hours until I wanted to pull my hair out (they'd woken up and eaten a few more times and but they were still sad and lonely for their mom). Finally I called him again and got him. And he said he'd take them.

Hallelujah hallelujah. I was limp with relief. They wouldn't grow up wild, but they'd be safe, and they'd have a turkey mama who looked right, sounded right and felt right and did all the right things, and they'd have foster brothers and sisters. He said he'd try to release them when they were old enough to fend for themselves. "Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't," he said, obviously having been in this predicament before. But maybe they'd have a chance to reconnect with wild turkeys. It beat being coon food, which is where they were headed when I picked them up. And that was the best I could do for them. When I fed them one last time and dropped them off on his doorstep at 8 pm, heaving a huge sigh of relief and reveling in the quiet, I reflected that it was a day well and oddly spent. As are many of my days. Caring this much about birds gets you into some weird fixes. But you learn, you live, you learn, with the wild things leading you all the way.

Little Lost Turkeys

You all had a little preview of this post in Phoebe's birthday post. Thanks so much for all your wishes and compliments on my little faunlet. But I want to ask:

Why does amazing bird stuff keep happening to me? I have enough to do keeping up with the birds that get into trouble on our 80 acres, not to mention the five calls a day from people all over the state wondering what to do with theirs.

I don't think it's a coinkydink.

I think birds know where to come when they're in trouble, that's what I think.

They wandered into the yard at dawn on June 22. They were peeping, a strident peep-PEEP PEEP? that sounded a lot like a tufted titmouse's spring song, but unvarying, insistent. I couldn't identify nor place the sound, and it bothered me until about ten AM. It circled and circled the yard, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. I didn't have time to chase it down.

I was busy--about 15 people were here for a field trip, a special visit to Indigo Hill, right on the heels of our trip out West. We'd been home from our two week trip for only a day and a half, and I'd done ten loads of laundry and hung them all out, and Bill had mowed and weedwhacked and the kids had helped with the laundry and raked the hay on the lawn. Thank the Lord I'd cleaned the house before we left, telling it to stay nice while we were gone. And I was showing 15 people around the gardens and bonsai collection and Bill was setting out to try to show them a Kentucky warbler when he called back to me and said, "Here's what's been peeping." And these two little wild turkeys not five days old came stepping out of a trumpetvine tangle, calling and calling, and they wandered, wide eyed, toward us.

Arrrggghhh. You don't want little lost turkeys wandering up to you. Because then they become your problem.
They couldn't find Mom; they'd been trying all morning and here it was noon and they were tired and hot so they settled for the nearest big slow- moving things they could find. This instinct to follow in young galliniformes is very strong. Although they pick up their own food from hatching day on, their lives depend on staying close to their mothers. Mom knows what to do when danger threatens; Mom's there to shield them from sun, rain and hail; she shows them good things to eat and where to drink, and she takes them up in the trees to roost under her wings at night.


Of course I began to worry about them the moment I laid eyes on them; I was magnetically pulled to help them. We let them wander around the yard for another two hours while we entertained, but all the while I was brooding about what I could do for them. So when the time came for our guests to leave I explained that I wouldn't be accompanying them down Newell's Run as I'd planned. I had turkeys to tend. I needed to find their mama. Being birdwatchers, they understood. We all have our priorities.

I Xeroxed some county road maps and sent them on their way with thanks for their understanding. They left with a real sense for what a rehabilitator's life is like--it can turn on a dime and usually does when you least expect it. When you're wired the way I am, suddenly being presented with a wild thing in need is kind of like getting a flat tire. Driving on isn't an option.

Before the group left, I recruited a few volunteers and when the turkeys headed out into the open lawn we sprinted to cut them off. I nabbed one as it zigzagged wildly, then huddled by my shoe (awww!) and the other darted into the rose hedge (rats!) where it took a few more minutes and some thorny abuse to my arms before my fingers finally closed around its downy little body.

I put them in a pet carrier with a dish of water and some chick starter, which they ignored. Oh, crap. Now what? They were peeping and peeping...So we waved everybody good bye and I donned my field clothes and set out for a two-hour walk around our property with the pet carrier under my arm, two shrilling baby turkeys inside it. I figured if I couldn't find their mom, she might find us by the loud location calls. I took my very best turkey hunting dog, Chet Baker, and told him that if he found a turkeh he was not to chase it but to wait quietly by me. He said he would. He walked just in front of me, quiet as a mouse, watching and sniffing, staying close and alert. Good boy, Chet.

A good dog is a joy, a gift, a blessing.

But after two hours all Chet and I had found was two cast turkey feathers, shining bronze in the green. The forest was silent. I was soaked with sweat and branded right through my long pants with stinging nettle welts. Note to self: Columbia "Titanium" zip-off pants are useless in the forest. You might as well be in hotpants. You might as well not wear any pants. Just waltz out there naked. They're too thin to stop stinging nettles. They might stop a halt, feeble or newborn mosquito. But maybe not.

I came back exhausted and thoroughly overheated, with two very hungry and tired little turkeys that were all my problem. Now I had to figure out what to feed them; what to DO with them. To be continued...