Wild Turkey Rescue

Driving home from getting animal feed this afternoon, I saw two baby chicks run across the two-lane highway that goes to our farm. Then, in the rear-view mirror, I saw them run back across the other way. So I had to stop and collect them from the road. I pulled over onto a farm field access. As I walked back toward them,  I could hear their unmistakable peeping--wild turkey poults, of course, not chicks!

I would have probably left them to find their mother, but they still seemed totally lost and while I was walking toward them, they very nearly got squished by a big pickup truck. I was able to easily scoop them up.  They still have  a bit of an egg tooth on the end of their beaks, so must be only a day or so old. Maybe they were the last of the clutch to hatch and could not keep up with their siblings. I waited quietly, holding them, in order to hear other chicks or the hen respond to their peeping, but no sign, so I took them home.

First I tried putting them in with the 4-week old chicks and three-week-old turkey poults, but they are much, much smaller and a few chicks started pecking at them, so now they are in a box in the house for a few days.

I was thinking of myself as a their rescuer, protecting them from motor vehicles, starvation  and predators, but if I raise them and then we harvest them for Thanksgiving, I guess I am a predator too. Maybe I will let them go....but we are surrounded by avid turkey hunters.

These are the little things that interrupt my well-laid plans so I never get anything accomplished!