WMHH BREAKING NEWS! Turkey Becomes A Mom By The Heat Of Summer
Paddles, the iconic bird of the homestead, has become a first time mom. Paddles, the ever broody turkey, has spent two full springs and summers trying to set on any eggs she could find. If you don’t remember Paddles, click here to catch up.
Not having a tom, the ability to hatch her own eggs was impossible. Broody hens rarely care who’s eggs they are setting on and Paddles was no different and she would try to set on the Egg Plant chicken eggs. They had tried allowing her to lay on a few eggs and for whatever reason they would be rotted and smelly.
” I gave up on trying to help Paddles be a mom,” said Miss Scarlett. But to keep the large turkey from crushing the chicken eggs, she would set one brown egg on the coop floor, baiting the persistent turkey to nest in that area and it worked. Paddles stayed on the floor and the chicken eggs, in the nest boxes were kept in one piece.
Since hens like to lay eggs where previous eggs have been laid, careful monitoring of the one egg policy made sure that no egg stayed under Paddles and a careful turnaround of day old eggs were fed to the dog.
With this careful discipline, Miss Scarlett was very surprised to find a chick chirping away under Paddles!
“I am not certain how the egg could have hatched. The only possibility was that it was buried under the wood chips and the North Carolina heat hatched it, ” said the still wowed Miss Scarlett. The weather reports verify that both night and day tempuratures have been in the needed hatching range.
Love at first sight made both the Austrolorpe chick and the turkey think they were family. Paddles and her surrogate chick, appropriately named Phoenix, were moved to the Chick Inn for bonding time. Both mother and baby are doing just fine.