Raising animals is hard. Not all the time. Sometimes the days go by and everything is easy. Feed, water, clean the coop or barn or no need to clean at all because all the animals are outside in the field, browsing or rooting or pecking, definitely pooping, all that soil enriched by their presence. Easy.
The hard days can look so many ways. An infection in a goat’s knee from a brush with old barbed wire that was abandoned in our field decades ago. A first-time-mama ewe exhausted laboring with triplets, little hooves and nose sticking out but not progressing, two more in line behind the first but mama too tired to push anymore, the first lamb’s head just too big. A hen with a bound egg, abdomen dragging on the ground and looking very, very uncomfortable. An old rooster too old to deal with lice himself. A sick pig, lethargic and stumbling, sick from what? Sick from what?
Sometimes you just don’t know. Like with the baby turkeys. Poults, they’re called. Babies nonetheless, all fluffy feathered and curious. They come to us in the mail. Someday we’d love to raise our own, have an incubator full of turkey eggs, a proud mama strutting in the field, a proud papa fanning his feathers when the eggs hatch and the poults emerge. But for now, without the year-round infrastructure to do so, we order them from a hatchery many states away and wait for the 5 a.m. phone call from our local post office. We cross our fingers and hope for the best.
Because sometimes we open the sturdy box with ventilation holes and not all the turkeys have arrived alive. We compost their small bodies with reverence, sadness, then go on and take care of the living. We dip their beaks in water to help them drink, we spread pulverized grain on feed bags spread on the brooder coop floor, we plug in their heat lamps to keep them warm. And we watch. We listen to them cheep cheep cheep. Sometimes we notice one that’s eyes are half closed or wings are drooping. Or they’ve flipped on their backs, unable to turn over (a condition called Poult Flip-Over Syndrome. Yes, that’s the real name). Or we come to check on the little flock and one is not getting up or one is very obviously dead. This year we lost nine out of fifty two upon arrival and in the first few hours and days. Not the usual loss, probably not our fault, but sad nonetheless.
It's hard. Farming is hard. Death is hard and not just because it affects us financially, even though that is also a factor. Each $7 poult becomes a $100-plus turkey to nourish our community. We don’t make much to begin with as we use organic feed—something we don’t compromise on—and it’s expensive. Losing young ones is less financially painful than losing older, well-fed birds, but it’s still sad, a life gone. Were they in pain? Did it go quickly? What could we have done to help them, if anything?
Even if we did everything “right,” especially when we did everything “right,” there is always that little voice doubting our abilities. Could we have done something different, better? Are we cut out to be livestock farmers caring for hundreds of animals a year?
Like the first year we raised turkeys and gave them unlimited access to grain (instead of feeding them twice a day as well as moving them twice a day to give them plenty of forage area). They got huge, like 48 pounds huge, and some got sick. That was our fault. We learned a lot that year and continue to learn so much from our animals, in sickness and in health. It’s hard to remember we’re learning too when animals are doing well, thriving, but we are—the lessons are just gentler and mundane (in the best possible way).
Sometimes predators take what they can and though we do everything we can to stop them, sometimes we can’t. Eagles, owls, raccoons, coyotes—they’re hungry too. And very resourceful. So we fortify our chicken and turkey tractors with extra wire and tarps, put up electric fencing, keep the small animals under cover so eagles can’t swoop and strike. We cringe in our beds when we hear the coyotes howling in the field at night, run out to check with a flashlight, hope we aren’t too late. We raise our faces to the evergreens on the periphery of our farm when we hear the eagles chirping, hoping their bellies are full of salmon, no need for poultry. We check for scratches or damaged limbs from a determined owl or raccoon reaching through the chicken-wired shelters after dusk.
We will watch and wait and listen, do chores, give gratitude for these beings—all these beings—in our ecosystem.
We will watch and care for this batch of cute little fuzzy poults that will turn into awkward teenager turkeys, then the strutting, curious, amusing turkeys we think of when we think Turkey. A fan of feathers, strange bits of skin hanging off their face (the snood), the gobbles that always make me smile whenever a plane flies overhead and the turkeys think it’s an eagle. We will care for the turkeys (and chickens, sheep, pigs, and goats) until we harvest them. Another hard day, the harvesting one, but one full of gratitude for the nourishment they provide our community and our family.
Raising animals is hard. And we thrive on doing hard things for the sake of our kids, our land, our community, and our world.