Baby turkeys!

Here is our first little poult to hatch, Little Guy, with his surrogate mommy, Nancy. He was fighting very hard to get away from me so he could go back to his beloved mom.



And here is the second egg, still in progress. The children have already named this one Neville.

* UPDATE * Wednesday morning and Neville is fluffy and beautiful! He actually hatched into my hand last night. He had chipped away his shell all but a tiny hinge and then seemed to get stuck. His feathers were drying. I gently pulled the end of his shell off him, and there was no blood flow to it at all, so that was OK so far, and then he couldn't seem to get out of the rest of the shell, so I held him by the shell over my other palm and let him work his way out with the help of gravity. And poof, I had a turkey poult in my hand!

This morning he and his Mommy, Hepzibah, are doing great.

With two hens and two poults, these are going to be the most spoiled rotten turkeys on the planet.


* ANOTHER UPDATE * I gave in to reason and moved Neville in under Nancy, so she has both babies, and took her eggs and put them under Hepzibah, though I don't think any of them are going to hatch. Nancy looked a little surprised when she noticed that her single baby had magically turned into two babies, but she tucked them both back under her feathers and decided that she must have been mistaken. Hepzibah doesn't seem to miss Neville one bit; she was more interested in the eggs anyway. She also wasn't trying to teach Neville to eat, whereas Nancy has been coaching Little Guy on pecking at his scratch, which he needs (turkeys aren't hard-wired with that information like chickens are).