Coyote Ridge FarmsWelcome To Our Rural Blog

Are we truly a turkey rescue now? Well, no. But this is turkey country here in west-central Minnesota and some local folks who work at one of the area turkey hatcheries saved 2 poults (turkey chicks) from certain death. Now we have them.

This morning we had guests – a young couple.  When they drove into the yard, we were prepared to tell them we were sold out of eggs.  With the nationwide contaminated egg recall, small farm eggs are in high demand and selling out of eggs is now the common theme.  We were somewhat relieved they weren’t here for eggs.  When they walked to the rear of their vehicle, Carol thought they were here to drop-off an unwanted rabbit (we get that a lot).  That too was not the case.  Carol said that when she walked around to the back of the truck, there was a shoe box with two small turkey heads sticking out of the holes in it.  Cool!

It seems that our guests had friends employed at one of the hatcheries and couldn’t bare to see these perfectly healthy poults destroyed.  One might be asking themselves “Why destroy these birds?”  It seems that non-white  birds have no value in the commercial world.  The pin feathers of white birds do not show up on the skin after butchering… black feathers do.  Most colored chicks are destroyed (usually drowned) before they are 24 hrs old.  Believe it or not, if these hatcheries have enough birds that are killed, they are dehydrate/dried, where they are sold to feed mills and put back into poultry feed.  In this part of the country, that means turkeys are being fed dead turkeys.  Does anybody remember mad-cow disease? Look it up, then scroll down to “Epidemic in British cattle”.

The turkey poults seem to be doing fine.

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