I usually lock the poults up either in a brooder or a reliable broody before letting them join the flock. Broodies get minimum 2 weeks, brooder poults get 2 months, usually.
No, definitely not pairs. They pretty much go where they want. Theres about 20ish hens and 5 toms, to build a pen they would be happy with costs a lot.
Heck, I had a dog spook the turkeys a few years ago before I had the big guardians. The hens flew a quarter of a mile away to the far hay field. It was lucky they flew that way and not towards the houses east of me. Heritage hens fly pretty darned well. The toms? not so much..
heritage and wild turkeys are the same species, only difference is domestication. All the heritage colors sometimes even pop up naturally in wild flocks, but often the wilds will mate with the heritage flocks and intermingle genetics. It is probably not a terrible idea, on their part, for...
My mother in law made some silly birds sweaters. I put one on this hen because it's funny. I didn't leave it on her or anything. She's mad because I put her in the garden so I wouldn't have to chase her across the yard.
A gal from Ag Daily wrote an article about me and Esther that got posted for Thanksgiving today. The only thing in the article was about Riddley Bronzes, I don't know anything about them, but otherwise the article is accurate and I love it.
It was cool, but not particularly wet today. It rained a little last night, supposed to be the big freeze tonight so I did pick down all of the garden goodies today, because today is the last day for tomatoes. Usually they don't get this long to grow so hooray?