Friday 5 June 2009

In a Quandary!

OK - so today the turkey eggs arrived from e-bay. All looking fresh and in good condition. Six bourbon reds and six black norfolk. But now I have to decide.....

a) do I put half the eggs under the growly buff orpington in the byre who has been sitting for a number of days on nothing and is certainly big enough to brood six turkey eggs but has an alarming habit of suddenly forgetting what she's supposed to be doing and abandoning her nest in favour of a riotous party with friends; or

b) do I put half the eggs under the dour little bantam who is sitting with her back to the world resolutely sitting, again on nothing, but who is loathe to leave her post even for a call of nature. She might be a bit small for six big eggs, and she also is lacking in a sense of humour - I remember how hatching those guinea fowl eggs last year went down - she couldn't see the funny side of that, so how will she be with turkeys? or

c) do I put six under each broody and let them get on with it, risking all the eggs if the party spirit gets too much for the buff orp to handle, and the little bantam looses her footing and plummets off her clutch; or

d) do I put them all in the incubator and risk a power cut - which is what happened in 2006 and it gave us many sleepless nights- both waiting for the eggs to hatch (which fortunately most of them did) and also with ten turkeys in a cage in the sitting room screaming their heads off and needing attention all the time; or

e) do I put three under each broody, six in the incubator and hope for the best - working on the basis that if the incubator ones hatch out I can add them to any family that the others might have hatched themselves.

Oh dear, its not an easy decision, but one which will have to be made tomorrow....

3 comments:

donnie said...

(e) seems the least risk - though our call ducks can wander off for hours and hours at a time and still have a 90 - 100% success rate - get some call ducks - it's only the last week when things get fragile...

Anonymous said...

I'd go with Donnie. e.....good luck.

Joanne B Kaar said...

I didn't know you could buy them from e-bay!