Turkey blog- Tatiana’s Epic Love Story- first egg

Throughout the day I periodically gather the pasture birds for snacks. I do this to keep them oriented to a central location where they know to get resources so they won’t wander too far looking for food, and also to check in for a quick head count.

Today I could not find Tatiana anywhere. She is loud for a turkey, perhaps because she was raised with ducks. I could not hear her. I got worried and started to search for her. I called for her. Only silence. Her constant presence by my side when I am outdoors was suddenly absent. I felt a pang in my chest. If anything happened to her, I would be so sad. The risk of letting birds pasture near to the forest is that you cannot control everything that happens. We have many predators waiting for an opportunity for an easy meal. The benefits are too numerous to mention so we do take that risk.

I searched and searched for her. I finally spotted her between the porch and the main house. She made no move when I called her and no sound. I worried that she might be sick. I walked around the side so I could see her and I understood her absence and her silence. She was standing looking dazed over her first egg. I know that I do a fair amount of anthropomorphizing my animal friends but I do believe there are some fairly universal shared experiences to being born female. One of them is physical pain. I walked back down the hill to give her some space. I didn’t make it all the way back to the flock before she came running after me, loudly, back to her usual self. I gave her an extra handful of freeze dried grubs. We should up her protein.

Later I told my family what had transpired. We went and retrieved her egg from under the porch. We saw that it had a small smear of blood on it. It was such a tender moment for me. In her one perfect egg I felt her hope for the future, her strength, her love, and her pain in my own mothers’ heart.

Turkey blog-Tatiana’s Epic Love Story-Lukewarm

Misha now goes on full display in Tatiana’s presence. She predominantly ignores him. She continues to follow me around when I am outside but the crying outside my gate has stopped. I consider this to be good progress.

Misha is king of the barnyard. We have several feeders the birds have access to to avoid to much competition. Tatiana will not allow the chickens to eat at a feeder with her but she lets the ducks eat with her. Misha allows no one but Tatiana to eat with him. He is so big in comparison to the others that they don’t question it. They just steer clear of him and either wait or go to another feeder.

She still gets down in front of me all the time. Misha is usually nearby and I call his attention to this behavior which he is already aware of. I slowly step away so he can approach her. As soon as he touches her she gets up and runs away. He is young and somewhat shy and tentative. I have never observed them to mate successfully but she tolerates his presence in a general sense now.

He is starting to show protective behavior regarding her also which I like to see. Sometimes when she is being overly helpful and I have to shoo her away, he puffs up at me and comes up to get between us. He generally follows her at a distance wherever she goes.

Turkey blog-Tatiana’s Epic Love Story-Misha

We found a suitable boyfriend for Tatiana on Craigslist. We named him Misha. I imagined their first meeting to be like them running to each other through a field of flowers and embracing in the middle. Then of course, they live out their long lives in love and bliss. That’s still the plan. Everyone hold that vision for Tatiana and Misha.

I was so excited to bring him home. I carried him down the hill to Tatiana and opened the door to his travel cage. She eagerly ran up to the cage to see the new arrival. I brought my iPad down to film their first meeting for posterity. He came out of the cage and they checked each other out. Then she attacked him. She pecked the sh&/#! out of his head and I had to remove her from the space.

We kept him in an outdoor enclosure separate from the pasture for the first several days so he could orient to his new life and get to know the rest of the mixed flock through the fence. We brought Tatiana in every day for short supervised visits. She continued to peck him and eventually he pecked her back, but in a subdued way. He is much bigger than her and could really hurt her if he wanted to. Mostly he submitted to her and she stopped. It was good strategy on his part.

He is a very calm and gentle bird. He provides a good balance for Tatiana whom I would describe as neither calm nor gentle.

Turkey blog-Tatiana’s Epic Love Story-Craigslist

Soon, the general consensus on the ranch was that Tatiana needs a mate right now, not in the spring, not next fall, right now!!!

I had heard that you could find a boyfriend on Craigslist, so we began our search. We could not find a Heritage Blue Slate turkey within 200 miles. We really like the blue slates and wanted to keep that line going here. Tatiana continued to cry outside my gate. We expanded our search to any variety of heritage turkey. We found a bonded pair of Narragansett’s in Eastern Oregon. We thought they looked good and Tatiana would be able to join with them. At the time there was heavy snow on all the mountain passes that we would have to cross to get them. It was too difficult even with Norms 4 wheel drive.

Then we saw a post for a young Narragansett Tom turkey in Washington not too far from us. I made arrangements to pick him up. I showed Tatiana his photo on my phone. She pecked my sleeve and got down, which likely had nothing to do with the photo on my phone but that’s what happened.

I arrived at this young turkeys home. His owner took me to his back yard and the turkey walked up to us. He was a tame suburban turkey who was well loved and cared for. He was tall and gangly like a teen turkey but stunningly beautiful. It was that moment that I fell in love with Narragansetts. They are amazing, beautiful birds. I plan to get more in the future once everyone settles in and Tatiana’s situation resolves.

He rode home in the front seat of my truck with me. This was his first trip away from his home. He was nervous but curious. We sat in my truck and looked at each other. Tatiana has blue eyes and the first thing I noticed about him was his big brown eyes. He looked right at me and I could see his intelligence. I told him that he was going to have a good life and we drove home.

Turkey blog-Tatiana’s Epic Love Story-Puberty

Tatiana continued to follow me incessantly any time I went outside. I suggested that she rethink things and that I am actually an apex predator. I thought the ducks could be better companions for her. Perhaps she would like the ducks better if they used power tools. I have a cordless drill and Tatiana is fascinated by it. She has no fear of the sound it makes and gets right in there and pecks at my screws and pecks at the drill.

I was having a hard time getting anything done so I thought perhaps I should be a little scarier. I tried a few different things and ended up with the intro to “Hooked on a feeling” the song that starts off with “Ooga Chaka, ooga ooga, etc” I had recently watched “Guardians of the Galaxy” again and it was stuck in my head.

So when she got too far up in my business I would chant Ooga Chaka and puff my arms out and spin around and chase her away. It worked at first and she would leave me alone for a moment.

One of the things that differentiates “Heritage” turkeys from the double breasted commercial variety is their ability to reproduce naturally. Commercial turkeys are not able to reproduce without artificial insemination. I have plenty of thoughts about the commercial turkey industry but will save that for a day when I’m feeling overly elated and need a good dose of depression to cool down with.

Natural breeding still has its pitfalls and sometimes hens can get injured. A good breeding hen will do a behavior called “ getting down”. She will lay down on the ground in a stable position so the Tom can mate her without falling off. Not all hens will do this. It is a desired trait.

Perhaps my Ooga chaka-ing inspired Tatiana to display this behavior towards me. I will never know. Something made her decide that I would be an appropriate mate for her. She drove me crazy helping with projects but now it was really a situation! The minute I came outside she would run or fly from wherever she was to be near me. She chirped and pecked at me for attention. Any time I tried to walk anywhere she ran in front of me and “got down”. When I went inside my house she sat outside my gate and cried until I came back out. My dog would bark at her by the gate and she completely ignored him. He’s a big scary dog when someone is at the gate. He gave up barking at her. He was like, “So Rowan, there’s a sexy lady turkey outside for you, what should I tell her?”

Tell her that she’s very pretty and some more turkeys are coming to live with her in the spring who will grow up to be good companions and an appropriate mate for her. My dog just looked at me like…do you really think that’s going to work ?

Turkey blog-Tatiana’s Epic Love Story-Who am I?

Tatiana was raised with chickens and ducks. She doesn’t like chickens and she loves ducks but I believe that she knows that she herself is neither a chicken or duck. She may believe that she’s a rancher! Of all the beings that she has grown up with she seems to have mostly imprinted on us.

She is extremely tame and has no fear of us at all. She is curious to the point of being a busybody. Any project or task that I’m doing however novel or mundane she is right there in it, helping. She is in fact more helpful than the goats even at doing projects. If you have ever had goats help you with a project, you know what I mean!!

I have been working on their “Chex Mix” area to prepare for spring and another round of chicks and ducklings. We were planning to purchase a run of Heritage Blue Slate turkeys this spring. Our breeding group of Blue Slates are Tatiana’s parents so that line is not appropriate for a mate choice for her. We would choose a Tom from the new group and she would begin mating in 2026. That was the plan…

Turkey blog-Tatiana’s Epic Love Story- early days

Through a series of unfortunate events, Tatiana was our only surviving chick of our 2024 season of Blue Slate hatch eggs. A flock bird has great psychological difficulty being alone so we bought her some Barnavelder chicks that were about the same age. She never really liked the Barnavelders and they did not bond.

Around the same time we had a group of ducklings that got rejected by their parents. We added 8 ducklings to this little brood flock. Stella named them “The Chex Mix”.

Tatiana loved the ducklings! At first we had them in separate brooder boxes in the same room. Tatiana would jump out of her box and into the duck box. She always wanted to be with the ducklings. I don’t know why. Ducks are a huge mess and very loud. They make up for it in cuteness, I suppose.

How to sheep!

When I first moved to Strawberry Moon Ranch in October of 2020, the 4 sheep became my responsibility. The first thing that I did was get to know them. They were pretty feral, do it yourself type sheep, strong and hardy. Mama Sheep was and still is their leader. I could not get very close to them. They all watched Mama to see what she would do, and she was skeptical.

One of my first interactions with Mama involved an apple. I picked an apple off one of the trees in the lower orchard and was eating it when I noticed Mama watching me. It wasn’t unusual for them to be watching, they always watched me, and when I would look at them they would act like they weren’t watching me, hilarious. I thought maybe she might also want an apple but they were too high for her to reach. I picked another apple and rolled it on the ground towards Mama. It stopped at her feet. I looked at her and took a bite of my apple. She looked down at the apple then bent her head down. I thought with delight that she was going to eat the apple, instead she used her nose to roll the apple back to me. It stopped at my feet and she looked at me. We were playing a game. I realized why Mama is in charge as I looked in her eyes. She is a very intelligent being.

Mama quickly caught on that I was her new resource provider. She tracked my movements and learned my patterns just like she knows Norms patterns. She knows where we are in the house! She knows that Norm is most often in the study and when she wants his attention she will rub her horns on the wall outside the study on the west side of the house. In the mornings before chore time I am most likely to be at the kitchen table drinking coffee. The sheep can’t reach the house outside the kitchen but they can see in the south kitchen window from the hillside. If I run even a few minutes late on chores I get the feeling of being watched. I look out the kitchen window and Mama and her crew are all silently staring at me from the hill. I believe I mentioned in her bio that Mama likes order. When breakfast is at 6, she wants it at 6, not a minute past.

For the first year I could not get within 10 feet of the sheep. Norm let the sheep run wild and believes they are smart enough to do anything they need without intervention. I am more anxious about my ability to care for them if they are sick or hurt if they are so feral. Our agreement is that the sheep are my responsibility. There’s a new shepherd in town. So, I found snacks that they really like and slowly trained them to come when I whistle to get snacks which they have to eat from my hand. We have come a long way! ….snacks!

How to Sheep! Shearing!.

The sheep need to be sheared once a year at the beginning of summer. Norm did not shear them himself but hired someone to do the shearing every year. He gave me the number and suggested I do the same. The first summer that I was to manage shearing the person who had been doing it was not available. I tried to find someone else to come out which is difficult for only 4 sheep. Professional shearers want to travel for 20, 30, 100 sheep to make it worth their trip, not 4. I could not find anyone to come and western Oregon was about to experience a “heat dome” where the temperature was predicted to be in the triple digits which is unusual for this area.

I was beside myself with worry that our sheep would die in the heat if I didn’t get them sheared. I couldn’t find anyone to come so I thought…”how hard could it be?” I started watching YouTube videos and I watched a great movie called “She Shears” about women in New Zealand who compete against men for the “Golden Shears” trophy, because there is no ladies division. I convinced myself that I could shear them myself. For reference, the sheep in the movies and on the You Tube tutorials are the little standard white sheep with no horns. Not exactly the same sheep that we have. The 2 female Jacob’s likely weigh about 110 lbs. and the 2 male (neutered) Icelandic crosses likely weigh 200-250 lbs. I weigh 140 lbs…place your bets!

I went to my local farm supply store and purchased equipment. I got electric clippers and I also got hand clippers. The workers I spoke to knew right away that I was a greenhorn. One of them said “come back and let us know how it goes” the other said “take a video, please take a video!” Sadly during this whole time frame I was too overwhelmed to worry about videos or even photos so all I have are these memories.

The next day it was decided that Stella and I would work as a team to shear the sheep. We would drive them up to the corral and close the gate so they would be contained in a smaller area. I would wrestle the sheep and then Stella would hand me the shears when I got them in position. I decided to go with the hand shears because I was too daunted by the clippers and the corral was pretty far from electricity. We planned it all out and had enough time before Stella had other obligations in town. We drove all the sheep into the corral no problem and closed the gate. Success!

As soon as the sheep realized that they were trapped the 2 big males charged the fence and fairly easily knocked it over! All the sheep then just ran out into the larger pasture. It was too big of an area to chase them and now they were spooked. So, while Stella prepared to leave for town we formulated “plan B” I put the shears in a backpack with a water bottle and I followed them in the pasture. I actually said, “I’ll just keep following them and eventually they will get tired and I will jump on them like a panther and shear them in the field” it was the best plan B I could come up with and the heat dome was coming.

I followed them for hours and the minute I would get close to them they would effortlessly outrun me. I decided to leverage their natural curiosity. I sat down in the shade and ignored them. I scrolled through my phone as if it was the most compelling thing in the field, maybe even the world. It was a hot day and they also wanted the shade. Even more than that, they wanted to know what Kim Kardashian was wearing today. They inched closer trying to see what I was doing. I could see Mama Sheep’s leg within striking distance in my peripheral vision. At the same time I dropped my phone and reached out and grabbed her leg. I got her!

I was surprised by her speed and strength. She dragged me on the ground for about 30 feet but by this time I was over 7 hours in on this project and I still had 4 sheep to shear so I didn’t let go. I’m not really sure how I got my feet under me and wrestled her down. I did it though. I got her in shearing position on her back with her head between my knees. I reached in my backpack and whipped out my shears. Who knew they did not come presharpened out of the package?!? Are you kidding me?!!!

I worked so hard trying to use those dull shears to cut a tuft of wool here and there. Just then I heard Stella return from town coming up the drive. Stella saw me in the field and yelled out the window, “She Shears!!” I yelled back, “Help! Bring the kitchen scissors!” Stella parked and got the scissors and ran down the hill. (I know! Running with scissors is a bad idea. Don’t try this at home. I know it says “how to sheep” in the title but this is not actually a tutorial!)

Stella arrived with scissors and by this time I had been holding Mama sheep down for about 15 minutes. For reference the women from New Zealand in the Golden Shears competition shear a whole sheep in under 4 minutes! My legs were shaking and we were both clipping as fast as we could with the kitchen scissors and the dull shears. We managed to get one side of her very choppily clipped. I said to Stella, “I’m losing my legs” to which Stella replied wide eyed, “what does that mean?” I said, “it means the next time she really struggles I’m not going to be able to hold her, I’ll say NOW and we will both jump back and let her go” almost on cue Mama started to kick and struggle. “Now!” We let her go. She ran off and the other sheep all sniffed at her and gave me the stink eye while I lay in the grass trying not to vomit.

The next day my legs were muscularly sore but also covered in bruises from gripping Mamas horns but I was bound and determined to shear those sheep. Stella sharpened the shears and made me promise not to try and shear the sheep by myself. I value keeping my word with people that I love and respect so I am not proud of what happened next. It was just such a unique opportunity and the projected heat dome was expected to arrive in less than 2 days. No one else was home and it did seem like a life or death matter to me.

The gate to the garden by the house was left open and Mama Sheep was in there eating Stella’s tomatoes. if I could slip around the back and close the gate she would be trapped in a small area and I could catch her and I already knew I could get her in shearing position, I had done it once. In retrospect I may have been over confident. I put on the backpack with the sharpened shears and snuck around and closed the gate.

I cornered her between the fence and the side of the house. I was looking at her horns and trying to get over her to get a good angle to grab them when she did what I never expected. She put her head down and charged me. She hit me just below the knee like a Mama Sheep bowling ball and just like a tall tottering bowling pin I went flying. My head hit the side of the house then I slid down the surprisingly scratchy wood siding, ripping the skin off of my nose and face. Then my knees hit the gravel and I stopped. I was stunned and saw stars. I wasn’t sure how badly I was hurt, just that blood was dripping from my face.

Mama turned to face me and was pawing her foot and bobbing her head at me like, “you wanna go some more?” I lowered my eyes from her and said “no ma’am , I just want to carefully sneak past you and open yonder gate.” Which is what I did before I went in the house and washed my face. I spent the rest of the evening lying in bed scrolling through tranquilizer gun listings. You can buy a tranquilizer gun on Amazon for $650. Medication sold separately. I didn’t have time. One day left until the heat dome.

My family was mad at me.

First thing the next morning I went back to the farm supply store. This was during early Covid so masks were still required which I appreciated because half of my face was now a scab. The goose egg on my forehead was clearly visible though. I walked back to the livestock section and asked if they carried tranquilizer guns. The clerk I spoke to just looked vaguely afraid and shook her head no. The other person working remembered me from buying the clippers and gave me a couple phone numbers of livestock veterinarians in the area. He said maybe they would have resources to help me.

I called the veterinarian closest to me and I said, “I need you to come to my house and tranquilize my sheep so I can shear them before the heat comes.” Then I disjointedly blathered out much of the previous story very quickly. She said, “No, just no. No veterinarian would do that for a number of reasons. You need to let go of the idea that you are going to get your sheep sheared today. You need to stop chasing them around trying to shear them because you are probably stressing them out and you are OBVIOUSLY stressing yourself out. You need to build a proper corral to contain them and you need to call a professional shearer. Make sure they have water and shade and your sheep will probably be ok.”

They were ok in the heat. It reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit in the closest town. The heat lasted for 3 days and passed.

I built a corral and called Johnny who now comes every year.

I might give shearing another shot this summer. Mama hurt her foot last year and I had to wrestle her down and clean and inspect her foot, she’s fine. So, we are 2 to 1 now. I think that makes me the champion clearly. Plus I can easily catch the sheep now…snacks.

.