This is our lovely turkey couple. Only "Tom" here has a name (the bigger of the two in the forefront of this photo). We simply call them...turkey hen and turkey tom. We've had them for about a year now...and are hoping to maybe have some turkey pullets sometime in the near future. They hang out quite calmly with the chickens.
Yet, we have a couple of "flocks" of wild turkeys that have been circulating the neighborhood for about the same amount of time. In fact, the last tom turkey we had (about a year and a half ago) went missing and we suspect it was because he joined one of the local wild groups of birds.
Well, a strange thing happened this past week. First of all, our Tom has been doing nothing but poof and twirl for his girl since the first melting off of snow. He spends most of his days all poofed out in all his glory showing off for his girl. I'd say she seems meh...maybe slightly interested. But this week...out of the clear blue...this happens... low and behold...a dance-a-thon-of-sorts begins between a wild turkey tom and our tom. Wild tom shows up outta the blue and proceeds to challenge our guy nearly every day...yet ironically through the fence. Quite the show I might add.. Lots of poofin and pecking through the fence and dancing around.
Miss thang looking on all sort of like "yeah...work for it boys" in the background.
Until I start to realize...what's gonna happen here? Blood will be shed over this unless there's an intervention.
And over the past few days, we've been letting the chickens out to roam the yard and peck at bugs and grass and such...which naturally means the turkeys also are free to run the yard....until....Chris says to me one afternoon this week...
"Um, there are turkeys fighting in our yard!"
Eeek! I hop up and look out the window. Sure enough...both toms are going at it face-to-face.
This isn't cool. We assumed our tom might win any such face-off...however, he may be older...but is it fair to pit wild versus domesticated? Our turkey is at risk of being punked! Mr. young turkey has likely spent many hours wrestling with his young juvenile turkey buddies in the fields in prep for such mating season...but I certainly don't want our guy to lose an eye at the very least over a girlie dispute.
This photo here is one of Mr. wild-thang getting a bit of the upper foot on our big-ole-dude. Not cool. Time for the intervention I spoke of earlier.
Minutes after this photo we brought in our two young fox terriers to chase mr. wild thang off...and that they did. If we can have our little fox terriers chase him off every time he comes around hopefully he will lose interest here and find a nice young female somewhere else soon.
Never know what might happen next here in the country? Can't say I ever would have guessed THIS to happen.
Meanwhile...might be time to sketch and draw some turkey.
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