Here’s a better photo from yesterday. It’s now Day Three and mama hen still has a chirping tennis ball hiding under her skirts.
And apparently we are picking up some Silkie roosters and a couple young turkeys this evening. Can you say “Let’s disrupt the fuck out of a flock!” boys and girls? I knew you could.
Oh, man, turkeys are the best. Some friends here raise them, and by mid summer they’re old enough that if I stand near the flock and say anything in the tone of a punchline, they all gobble and it sounds like laughter. Hours of entertainment!
I would so do that!
r/ContagiousLaughter
It’s so fun! I always pretend I’m doing stand up, “And then he said, blah blah blah,” and they gobble. 
Total headcount on the very noisy car ride home was three little tiny turkeys, three Silkie roosters, and a Silkie/Black rooster. Pics forthcoming, I swear!
I only heard the classic turkey gobble for the first time today. Didn’t have the presence of mind to try to talk to the one very dramatic male, as I was running around someone else’s yard trying to catch terrified birds.
“As god as my witness I think they can fly”
Arthur Carlson
The baby ones can, and reasonably well, as we learned yesterday.
When we start chicks they’re indoors under heat lamps and helicopter parents for the first couple weeks, then they graduate to one of two very well protected outdoor arrangements, either one of two ‘vaults’ in the coop, or the ‘chick bin’ attached to our main barn. So they are halfway through adolescence before they get actually free ranged.
But yesterday’s adoptions came from a more conventional back yard setup where hatchlings just do their normal hatchling stuffs from day one. Because their back yard is surrounded by cute little houses with other back yards, not an actual wildlife preserve. I’d guess these guys are two to three weeks old, and can already teleport vertically.
I’d joke that I hope they’re enjoying General Population, but since one of them spent the night down at the ‘landfill’ along with a Silkie Rooster, I’d say there’s still some unease. They tried to congregate beneath our one fairly large juvenile turkey right before it got dark last night, but Toni was all, like, “LOL WUT?” and wandered off to go sleep in what I used to consider my workshop. *sigh*
Oh and yes, that line from WKRP goes through my head at least once a week. Usually more.
Kookaburra sits on the balcony
Disdainfully looking at my cup of tea
Laugh kookaburra
Laugh kookaburra
You’re not getting any
