CELEBRITY CHICKENS

.. And the usual tantrums from the turkeys

 AFTER A great deal of thought I produced a line up of Scots Dumpys who will feature in a new TV series based in 17th century Britain ... their star quality was picked up by a company which specialises in sourcing and locating creatures for big TV and film productions and, as an endangered species, there's not many Scots Dumpys around these days.

Here is the final line up of chickens who will make their acting debut headed by Horatio who, as you can see, has all his tail feathers and looks quite the part. Poor old Napoleon, the alpha male in the hen pen is in the middle of moulting and would look more suited to a Hammer House of Horror movie than some bodice-ripping costume drama.
 I carried out the auditions on the front lawn and the hens really seemed to enjoy themselves as they out pecked and out performed each other for the parts of 17th century poultry. I just hope there's no nerves tomorrow when it really will be lights, camera, action!

 Afterwards I should be able to tell you more about the TV series, who is making it, what it's called and who is starring in it. I'm really excited since I've never worked on a movie set before. Naturally a full report will follow in a few days time.

However not everyone in the farm is pleased as you can see above - poor Ant and Dec turned up for the audition looking absolutely magnificent but the truth is Bourbon Red turkeys didn't emerge until the 19th century and even then only in America in Kentucky, Pennslyvania. I wonder if I could get them a part in Downton Abbey?

NATURE OR NURTURE

.. Or should we give a helping hand?

OUTDOOR SUPER SCOUT: Davy
Crockett portrayed by Fess Parker

  HOT on the heels of his success of  finding a dead fox while out for a stroll, my city-based husband now thinks he's a cross between American frontier legend Davy Crockett and British super sleuth Sherlock Holmes. So when I threw him the latest countryside conundrum he went off into the great outdoors with an air of confidence bordering on smug.
 For more than a week now one of the turkeys goes AWOL within minutes of being let out in the morning. She feeds with the others and then wanders off, usually when I'm not looking, only to reappear several hours later after I've already convinced myself some harm has befallen her. My routine on a morning is to first open up the turkey house and place their feed a few yards away on the ground outside. By the time I go to the hen pen and release the Scots Dumpys the turkeys begin to wander into the yard towards their feed and usually peer disdainfully through the wire mesh as the hens scramble for their food. And it is in these few minutes that one of the Three Degrees seizes the moment and goes off on her mystery mission, it's as though she completely vanishes into thin air leaving behind staggs Ant & Dec, Little Boots and her two sisters.

VANISHING ACT: Five 
turkeys but where's the sixth?

 Twice now I've tried to follow her but as soon as she turns round the corner of the building and down a series of steps in the 12 seconds it takes to follow her she's gone. Her colouring as a Bourbon Red is very striking but once in woodland her feathers seem to blend perfectly into the background. I recounted all of this in detail to hubby and he vowed he'd find her, after all he found the fox didn't he? Two mornings running he failed to come up with anything but with each day he became more determined and then the Eureka! moment happened. And just as he stumbled across the dead fox this great find also happened by accident. He was working in a wooded area below the hen pen when he heard something stirring in a pile of branches, twigs and sticks he'd bundled some weeks earlier against a gable wall. Expecting to see a rat or squirrel, or something equally furry he watched and waited and to his amazement a furtive-looking turkey hen crawled through the bracken, almost limbo dancing between the branches, to emerge from her secret den. After she left, he poked around the pile of branches that you can see in the picture, below left. they're in the foreground wedged between to gable end-style supporting walls. His search was duly rewarded as he discovered no less than half a dozen eggs.

HIDE & SEEK: Can you spot the nest?

 Experiencing a mixture of excitement and irritation as he relayed the news to me I grabbed a bowl and we went off to the site to check out his story. Over the next 20 minutes we were at loggerheads over what to do. My instincts told me to collect the large speckled eggs and wait for the arrival of my incubator but he-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is insisted that I let Nature take its course.
 On the one hand the turkey has shown a protective instinct, found a superb location to lay eggs and it is well sheltered if and when she is ready to sit on them. On the other hand, she's not a year old, this is her first batch of eggs and she has no experience of life as a mother; add to that she is used to sleeping inside a warm stable on an evening how will she cope with at least 25 nights under the stars? May be it's just luck that no predators have spotted her secret nest so far, but when she spends 24/7 for 25 days sitting on the nest she might not be as lucky.
 Hubby has gone back to London now,  and today I thought I would make a quick check of the nest. Here are a couple of pictures which will give you an idea of how well camouflaged she is to the human eye, but what about a fox?

SPOT THE BIRD: Can you see her?

GOTCHA: A clearer closer 
shot of the mum-to-be 

 As you can see from the picture left, she is very well hidden. I didn't see her but I stuck my camera phone into the bracken and clicked away not quite knowing what I was snapping and truth be told, I didn't realise she was in there at all because she remained completely silent throughout. I was merely trying to establish how many eggs she had laid and if they were still there so it took a while to spot her in this photograph, a bit like those babyscan pictures they show in hospitals to expectant mums, most of us sit there nodding enthusiastically too embarrassed to say we can't spot the baby. If you still can't see her check out the smaller picture above, on the right, which was taken from a slightly closer overhead angle. So what do you advise? Should I trust Nature or should I intervene, grab the eggs and incubate them in a controlled environment? Nature v Nurture - who wins?

TREAD CAREFULLY THE TURKEYS ARE COMING

.. Or may be not!

ANT & DEC have spent most of their days parading around the grounds puffing out their chests, fanning their feathers and generally posing making a two second gasping sound like air escaping quickly from a tyre in between the more familiar 'turkey gobble' noises they also emit.
 The whole point of having such a grand array of feathers is to attract the female of the species but these two appear to be so obsessed with each other it's almost as though they're joined at the hip.

ANT & DEC: best friends forever?

Occasionally they fall out and embark on some awful clashes (see video at bottom of this post) but no one ever emerges as the alpha male and the spats are quickly forgotten as they resume their vanity strolls with their four females following closely behind.
 Of course now that Spring is in the air there's all sorts of other activities breaking out as the garden birds start to sing and perform in front of their female counterparts, the geese have laid eggs and while one nest has been abandoned two of the geese seem determined to produce goslings.

Turkey troubles: The ubiquitous baster!

Drawing reproduced with kind permission

of Scott Kroll from 

http://kingcrowcomics.blogspot.co.uk/

 As discrete as the geese have been in the act of mating, Ant and Dec suddenly appear to have discovered their purpose in life and have started pursuing their Bourbon Red ladies with open enthusiasm. Turkey mating is euphemistically called 'treading' to those in the know and the Stags have certainly been treading ... at every available opportunity. The female usually sits down and then the male turkey does his thing, but after observing Ant and Dec close up, they look as though they're only giving their opposite numbers a massage by foot and they look as though they're trampling and not treading. I do hope you don't see me as some sort of Peeping Tom character lurking behind the bushes watching turkeys tread but it is important to establish if the eggs that they are laying are fertilised or not. The reason for my concern is that a couple of local friends dropped by and could shed little light on the matter other than to say most turkey breeders use artificial insemination and have special breeding rooms for the purpose. The conversation suddenly gave new meaning to the ubiquitous turkey baster and I could see my grand plans to breed the best Bourbon Reds in the Borders disintegrate. I recalled reading an article about how obese turkeys were unable to mate naturally and so most mass producers employ someone in a breeding unit to "milk" the stags before inseminating the female turkeys. Yes, I know, I also want to pull out my eyeballs and scrub them clean in the shower. I have no idea how it's done and nor do I have any desire to find out, suffice to say there's a lot to be said for organic and traditional farming methods but of course it's no use keeping turkeys if they don't know how to tread!

 I asked the local gamekeeper if he'd observed any treading while wandering about (yes, these are the sort of conversations in which we country folk indulge) and he said he had, to which I then asked about technique and did he think my stags were just standing on the females or were they actually doing something. He seemed quite perplexed by my line of questioning and said "treading is treading and they were treading." Moving swiftly on I waited until another friend happened by and I told her my dilemma. She laughed and said: "Turkeys are very dull. It's all over in seconds and if you blink you'll miss it and that's probably why you've not seen anything."

 Anyway, I'm none the wiser but I guess I will just have to let Nature take its course and hope the eggs are fertile. Now the problem is the nesting boxes I've made for the turkeys are empty so far and I have a feeling any eggs have been laid outside, somewhere.

 I'm going to have to spend the next few days stalking the damned birds to find out where they're stashing their eggs and remove them to a friend of mine who has an incubator. There are just some things I'm not prepared to leave to chance!