Panic stations this morning as we realized the Harvey Speckled turkey poults were hatching (2 days early) and that our sitting Jubilee Indian Game had been ousted by our Orpington cross, crushing a poult in the process. We took out two others, just hatched, and put the Jubilee back on the remaining four eggs. Ideally we wanted to get the newly hatched poults under her too but she is a very ferocious bird who gets easily stressed and any attempts to quietly slip them under her, resulted in pecks, flapping and worse, panicky jumps which meant a very real likelihood of the poor poults being stamped on. We retreated and left mum to it…
And then, up to the kitchen it was where our slightly taumatised poults spent the next few hours drying off in the Stanley before being popped under a heat lamp in the aviary - their cheeping from inside the range driving the poor dogs and cats mad...
We kept checking on mum and all remained calm and having heard an encouraging cheep from under her, we left her to it.
Not quite sure what will happen tomorrow, ideally we need to get mum in the aviary with whatever poults have hatched under her and see if we can re-introduce her to these two as well… It’s not going to be easy!!!
But in the meantime, we are very very chuffed to have these two - both of course who will be females....