Around here, the arrival of turkey poults can only mean one thing: a power outage. Last year, as you may possibly recall, the arrival coincided with a 4 hour outage, visit from cousins, and two lambings. Now THAT was tough.
This time around, the poults arrived later in the year. (Love those "COME GET YOUR BIRDS OUT OF HERE!" calls from the post office.) We set them up in the brooder (They need close to 100 constant degrees) and, right on schedule, the power went out. Oh, and it was 60 degrees and rainy.
The power is pretty steady here in Colrain, which makes these poultry outages all the more baffling. We usually have only two or three over the course of en entire year. But their timing is impeccable (ImPECKable???).
Anyway, I knew what to do this time around-- fill as many vessels as I could before the water from our well seeped irretrievably back to earth, and get busy making snuggly water bottles out of every spare container on hand. (I didn't get pictures this time around, but the poults snuggled up to those milk jugs and muddle through.)
I spent a couple hours warming the poults this way before order-- and power-- was restored. Luckily, reports of poult frailty (in relation to chicks) seem greatly exaggerated.
All of them made it through and they are doing just fine, thank you.
For those who like to have their goofy story with a side of useful information: The batch is 1/3 Giant White, 1/3 Bronze, and 1/3 Narragansett. We also have one "Chocolate Turkey" (for dessert. Well, not really for dessert.)
2 comments:
I have a friend whose poults arrived right before an ice storm. No power for over 24 hours. She made her husband check on the poults because she didn't want to find them all dead. But they all survived. Glad yours did too.
That was using your head by making the hot water bottles. I'll keep that in mind just in case it happens to us some time.
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