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!