They Sent Me 15 Baby TURKEYS in the Mail

The US government called at 5:22. Teddy called at 3-something in the morning, and it looked a lot like this. Standing in the rain, waiting for him to pee. Teddy called again. At 4-something in the morning, and it looked a lot like this. Me standing in the rain while he pooped. Put a little bit of writing in. Then, so the government called. It's our turkeys. Hey, guess what, guys? It's 6 o'clock. The turkeys came. What? The turkeys came.

Where are they?

They're at the post office.

Can I come with you?

Yeah, heck yeah. I figured you guys would want to come. Let's quietly and quickly get up and go get these turkeys.

Jonah.

Hey, Jonah. The older they get, the less excited they are. Hey, Jonah, the turkeys are here. Oh, this is Lily. Lily, the turkeys are here. Hey, Jonah, we gotta wake up. Jonah, wake up. Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown. Time to get up, my man. Turkeys are here. Wanna go get the turkeys? Okay, you guys ready?

Yeah.

Oh, you got ready fast. Mr. Brown, are you ready? You have to pick up your Legos? Okay, thank you. Hey, Rebecca. Hey. If you get done with your— what is that called? Castor oil pack. Will you, um, make magic water? If not, I'll just make it when I get back. I will. All right, all right, good job.

I think he wants to stay.

I think he does too, but we got to get the brooder warm. Hey, my man, we're about to leave, okay? Can you heat up the— can you get the brooder started warming up? Because that's the number one thing they're gonna want. That's what I need to drop the cord.

What's it called?

Drop cord. No, not a drop cord. Power strip. Okay, I'll find you a power strip. Where would we keep a power strip? Yep, the electronic box. We're supposed to have a yellow heavier duty one dedicated to it, but I don't know what he's done with it, so— I'm gonna go start the car. Okay, thank you, my man. Teddy getting in the bed with you.

I called him in here.

That'll get you up. Okay, here's your power strip if you can't find your heavier duty one. Okay, that's for that.

Okay.

All right, all right, get it warmed up as soon as you can, like within the next 5 minutes. It's not too far to the post office and back. All right, 6:15-ish. Not bad, not bad. 20 minutes ago everybody was asleep. Mr. Brown fed the cats. Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Now he's hungry.

Yeah, he's hungry. Oh, you're up.

Well, I had to go to the bathroom, so— okay, I, I'll just do this before I start oil pulling again. Yeah, not oil pulling, castor oil.

I think the magic water is especially potent for turkeys. This will actually only be our second time raising turkeys. We were successful the first time, only what, lost 5-10%? Not even. I think one of 13 or 2. And they say turkeys are tough and hard, and it's hard to get them through the, the poult stage, so We're gonna baby them a little bit.

Well, these are the commercial ones.

What's the name of them? Everybody's gonna want to know the name of the breed.

I think it's white breast brown broad breast agouti.

Basically, these are the Cornish cross. These are the sea monsters of turkeys. Fast growing. They're gonna be done in 14 weeks. 12. We're gonna butcher them with our second round of sea monsters, so we're— I got all the butchering stuff set up. All right, half a gallon of water, half a— or a quarter cup of honey, 2 minced garlic cloves.

I use my press, my garlic press.

But yeah, 2 pressed garlic cloves and 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar. That's a natural health boost. All right, let's go, bro.

Change it because he wanted to eat out of that one.

Okay, that's fine. Let's go. I warmed up the car for us. All right, let's get started putting Mr. Brown in. All right, let's get in your seat. Buddy, say thank you.

Can I hold that one?

She can carry them out and you're gonna carry them in. Okay, Lily, back here, back here. Lily, we kept the car running to keep it warm. We got it super hot.

They're little yellow chicks.

Not chicks.

What?

Poults. They're yellow. All right, let's do it.

I already did my breakfast, Posse.

Good job. All right, let's check your job on this brooder. All right, I like it. I feel like maybe we need to get it down a little closer. Is this warm? The bedding's not warm yet. So let's push it down. Do you have another light?

Yeah, that's it.

Let's rig up another light just to be safe, or a hover— hover brooder. Oh, look at you, you already have one. Raise it a little bit. Good for you, man, you did a good job on this.

Good job.

Okay, I think it just needs to be up just a hair, maybe in that corner, but we can look at it when we get the pulps in. Okay. All right, we got some, uh, turkey starter feed. You got to feed them different than chicks, they need more protein. I'm glad we went to the store yesterday. We didn't think these guys were coming till this weekend. This is kind of crazy how our hookup is here. Let's see if we can't, uh, I don't know, make that not so much in the path or hanging in the air. You want to put it in? Sure. Okay, put it under the feed. And did you plug in the brooder, Jenna? The bird— the hover? Okay, good. I think we'll need this drop cord that has 3 outlets at the end. I got a power strip on this side for the— for this brooder, and I've got a power strip on this side for this brooder. 2 hovers, a heat lamp, 2 heat lamps and a hover. And the way I did that was with a long power strip that actually had a 3-way at the end. We're running that out and over to our nearest electricity there at the end of the barn. Is that Mom's magic water? They don't get shavings in it, sweetie. Okay, you guys ready to do this? Let's find, uh, Josiah and Gideon. Found Josiah and Gideon. Hey, you guys ready for this? Okay, two hands. Gentle. They look like chicks, but they're turkeys.

I thought they were turkeys.

Let's go. Who wants to be a part of unloading the turkeys? Just Lily? And Gideon? Okay, whoever wants to needs to get in there now so we're not walking around with turkeys out. Okay.

Oh, look, we have to dip their beaks in the water.

Yes, you do. Oh yeah. So you guys, you're dipping putting your beak in the magic water, right?

Yeah.

And then putting them under the heat. Oh, they're skinnier than Chicks. They're langlier.

And they weigh a little bit more than Chicks. Oh, they're kind of falling over. The heat's right here. Healthy.

They look healthy. How many, how many are there? Did you count them? Uh, no. They look happy. They're, they're much— they're more lethargic than chicks. They like to lay down a lot. Oh, are they finding the food?

No, they're finding this.

They're looking, aren't they? They're pecking. Somebody want to get them some greens? Look, that one's eating. Let's not stick its head in and get some. Yay, they're doing good! Look, Lily got them some greens. They're all about it. Oh yeah, they're all about it, guys.

Hey, you know you can go under it. Go under it.

And how are the sea monsters doing? Very, very hungry. That's good. That's what I know a sea monster to be— very, very hungry because they grow very, very fast. All right, you guys, uh, close this door when you come out, okay? We don't want cats to get them. By the way, the sea monsters are 1 week old. So how many turkeys do we end up getting, Lily? 15. Okay, we want 12, guys. We can't lose too many, gotta do good by them. We've got a margin of error of 3. We want 1 turkey a month. We want our Thanksgiving turkey, and then we want 1 turkey a month for a year. Are you leaving us, Mr. Brown?

Yeah, man, come back!

What about the pigs, my man? All right, we got everything we need. Nesting material, feed for fat hens, feed for piglets and pigs, water for the ewes. Let's do it. What a nice sight. Okay, this is where the sheep were. Hey guys, you guys picked up the net. I know we're supposed to move the pig— the, the sheep in here.

Chicken.

Chickens, fat hens. All right, but I will say this, look how well they underbrushed in here. Sheep, sheep for the win. Easy to keep in and underbrush and taste better than goat. Nice, I like it. They've underbrushed so nice. That's a nice sight. Notice Moose eating the hay and the sheep were eating the ramble. Now they're coming over for a little bit of hay. This will be good underbrush tomorrow. Well, good morning! Don't you look nice, all shedded? You look so nice. Let's see if these guys even need water. Nope, I'm not hauling the water up for that. We've had so much rain. And what is— okay, I thought this was like bird feathers, but This is, this is sheep hair. They're really losing their coat now. Some of it in the water, we'll clean that out. Hey, good morning, good morning, good morning, Moose. How you doing? We don't have anywhere to move these fat hens, so we're just going to keep them in this. Let's move them up. Spread the love. And these are some happy, happy birds out here. Oh no, Josiah, we got a little piglet out. Holy smokes. Okay, well, we're gonna try. This is why we trained a buckets right here. Oh, there's the other one. Okay, they're both together. This is good. They come right to the bucket. Wonder what happened. Come on, pick. Will they follow me? Oh, yeah, no problem. Come on, Big. This probably. I guess we left a bucket in there and it came down on it. I bet it was a feed bucket just fine. They were feeding in there. Well, they're probably— they're fine. I mean, no problem, thank goodness. And the fence wasn't on. Yeah, the fence wasn't on. All right, here, you want to lift this? I'll get over and then you lift this net and we'll let them go through, okay? Come on. Come on. Pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig. Can you lift it any higher? There they come. There they come. Pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. Here we go. Pig, pig, pig. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much for coming back. My goodness. Oh, that was easy. Glad we trained them to a bucket. Now, here's a problem with the way we're free choice kelping. That's pretty much ruined. I don't think they're gonna eat that. Spread this out just, uh, so I don't know how long they were out. Lesson learned. Well, we know this, we know better. It was just an accident. And we get all the buckets out okay, and we know they're not going to roam too far. I don't know how long they were out, but they didn't go too far. And they got right back in, so it's not a big deal, is it? I was gonna feed, uh, sausage and bacon, but totally forgot the, the, uh, skim milk. All right, we got our skim. Hey, wait, where you going? Wait, where's everybody going? You want to go with Mr. Brown? All right, come go with us. All right, I'm gonna straighten up this fence because they've tilled some, uh, debris on it and I'm sure it's grounding out. They have not moved this. This is completely full. I guess it's where we put it. I just forgot it. Still working, so that's good. They have tilled this place very, very nicely. It's time to move them out tomorrow. You like your new pig waterer? Too bad you don't need to use it today since it rained like— feels like it rained 8 inches last night. Now for the great bucket cleaning before we milk. Check it out, just in time! Randolph finished the side shed, at least the roof, just in time to protect our wood chips that we'll use as bedding for our cows. Look, and it's dry. Okay, mucho dry. The sides are a little bit wet, so actually we're going to wall this. We're going to put a wall here and a wall here, and it's only going to be open on this side. So it would have gotten a little wet right there for the crazy blowing rain. but those are kind of rare events, and it's probably here only here on the surface. Yeah, it's dry right underneath that. That is the key to using wood chips as bedding, is keeping it dry. I haven't fed her anything. All right, you got enough in there to give her? Okay. Hey, look, Mom, are you just on the turkey call? She's seeing the turkeys for the first time. Don't they look good? They do look good.

15 turkeys.

Bright-eyed, healthy, moving, really active.

15 turkeys. He will, he will love turkey meat.

There's 15 of them, by the way. So is that what we ordered? So I don't really know what we ordered. We have to look. We want 12, so we got to be real careful. Tay's looking at the sea monsters now.

He's not as scared as he was.

He was really scared there for a minute. Scared of a little chick. There you go. Sound his voice. We are done with Aunt Flossie. Thank you so much, Aunt Flossie. Now on to Aunt Phyllis. Oh, Lily, did you give her all her alfalfa?

No.

Okay, will you give her some more? Will you go ahead and give her her ration? You feel nice without— with that— with your spring coat coming on. So thank you, you give us so much— milk, butter, cream, yogurt, ricotta. Man, thank you, thank you.

What are you gonna do with them?

We're gonna put them around the stanchion. Let's keep it mulch embedded around our— especially right here where we get a lot of manure. All right, we got that spread around. Looks much better. Sure, that was a little moist there on the end, but not too much. I think it'll dry out here under the shed. What do we got here, Jonah? We got everybody doing good. They're drinking and eating. The sea monsters are just crushing it. So happy about this. This is exciting. All right, everybody's doing good. Teddy, Teddy, Mom going to town. Very special trip. Oh, he's really enthused. He's gonna get his, uh, first— what's it called?

Haircut.

Haircut.

It's getting groomed.

You got to get these guys get these gold noodles, mini gold noodles groomed. He's gonna— he's gonna come back looking like a lion or what?

No, he's gonna come back looking like a dog.

We'll save that for Halloween. Yes. Okay. All right, let's get a good look at you. All right, and then we'll get a good look at you when you come back. Hey, we'll see you guys.

Hey Teddy, don't eat my stuff.

Bye-bye. Let's go ahead and put Mom's starts in in case it rains while we're out and about. How's everybody doing? I'm, I'm just impressed. They just seem like a lively bunch, don't they, Lily?

They are lively.

But the last time we got turkeys, they were just sleeping all the time. But these guys seem to be out and about. I guess because they grow so fast. We're gonna harvest them at 12 weeks. We got an extra net, couple waters. Hey, Josiah, look, Lily! We thank you guys so much for getting these plants in. I didn't see these. We got to get these in, too. All right. Try calling them, babe. It's off. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. I guess they have too many greens to be interested, Lily. We'll have to try the alfalfa. Oh look, here they come, Lily! You got one interested. Look, nice! Hold it steady. That's great, Lily. Oh, they love that one. That's a weed the cows wouldn't eat. See, he won't eat that. Let's try alfalfa.

You gotta get him situated.

Okay, you gotta get Moose's attention and get some on the ground. Oh, I would put a pile. There you go. Now come over here. Sheep, sheep, sheep, right out of your bucket. Look. Look now, that'll get them to come. Good job! Look at you, you sheep whisperer! Good job! Now will they let me pet them? They're scared of me. Don't be scared, don't be scared. I just want to pop a bear hug you. I just want to pop the bear hug. Oh, that's good. That's good. Cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. Teddy's got back from the group.

They tied a doggy handkerchief around him. Oh, yeah, look.

Good deal. We got our net up for our next move. Save one side. Jonah went to get hamburger. It's easier to put hamburger in before we move everybody because we don't have to worry about anybody getting out while we're trying to get hamburger in. Okay, should I open it up here so you don't have to step over this net? Okay, we don't really want to train him to go over the net because what if it falls? We still want him to stay in. Okay, there you go. Just focus on him. Focus on him. There you go. Good deal. That was easy.

You're setting it up while I keep him.

Okay. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. The favorite, the best part of the day right here. My favorite part of the day. Makes it all worth it. So we have sheep. The cool thing about this new system is we leave their old net up and we bring the fat hens in.

So 2 animals with just one of the fence work, and they're both going off one fence.

Yes, and because we could put them back to back, we can hook them up to the main wire there and don't even have to worry about two Energizer sources. It's 4 o'clock, guys. I'll let you guys have some free time before supper, but y'all want to check on the Salvadorians?

Yeah, sure.

All right. Hey, Mom's down here calling us. Oh, and she's got Teddy. We got We gotta see this dude. Oh my word, he's so different. Um, let me see this guy.

He does look way different.

Wow, we can see your eyes. That's nice. What'd she do, give him a shampoo? Yeah, hold him there so we can see him. Okay, come here, Teddy. Yeah, he's all puffy.

Yeah, I'm here. He's He's such a good boy.

He's same old dog.

This is your teddy bear.

Did he behave himself?

Yeah, he did pretty good, she said. I mean, it's first time ever, so we can't expect— she just did kind of like the face, the feet, and the butt.

Okay, Beauty's gonna get some minerals for her ewes. She realized they need some, so change of plans, I guess. And I'm gonna go move the luchadors.

Papa, watch it.

Sure. Oh, so how many Rhodes people can we sit in the front of Sally?

7.

Oh yeah, we do. Teddy's number 7. Let's roll the sheep shaw over here, my man. This beautiful walnut grove. Forestry, our pastures pasturing our forests. Well, if Rebecca's gonna be so diligent about her sheep minerals, I need to be so diligent about my cow minerals. I gotta get this cow shaw, this mineral shaw, over to the cows.

Whoa, Papa!

Well, I just ended up bringing it down here because we need enough minerals, and the mineral stash is right there, and the cows are going to be down here anyway. I just realized in just 1 to 2 days, so they'll be okay without the minerals up the hill for that period of time. So there's where bacon and sausage are, and this is the work they've done today. Getting it really nice. More and more food from the land, Becky. Of course it's our meat and the spaghetti, but the salad— pretty soon the cucumber will be in the tomato sauce. It's crazy. The tomatoes. You like it, G-Dog? Everybody likes it? Okay, good. This evening, let's get one more Look at the pulse. Yes, I'm ready. Life is better in pajamas and farm boots. So I'm going to show you the pulse one more time. Let's look on them. But before I do, quick announcement: 100 Days of Growing Food. Every year we document 100 days of growing food, just how much can we grow in that short amount of time. Starts tomorrow, a video every day. We're gonna do 6 vlogs a week, and one of those is gonna be an— and then an update video. So 6 vlogs and an update video every week. All right, let's check on these guys. Sea monsters crushing it. But how are you pulps doing? Everybody's alive and happy. And well, you guys are doing great. I love it. Look, some of them drinking right now, some of them around the feeder. You guys are just up and about wrestling. It's a good day. A real quick thank you to McMurray Hatchery for sending us those turkeys. Thank you so very much for the support you've offered us and than that, but also the support you offer to the homestead community in general. Thank you guys so very much. If, if any of the viewers, you guys are interested in checking out McMurray Hatchery, I'll leave the link for that down in the description. They're doing their best to keep up with this crazy newfound demand, demand from spring, but the newfound urgency to grow our own food. I'm proud of them. They're, uh, hatching as many chicks as possible to keep up with it. We're really stepping up to the plate to get people what they want. I appreciate them for that. So thank you, McMurray Hatchery.