Turkey rescue

One of the pigs on this side of the fence.
La mancha goats grazing on the other side.

Last week we decided to put the milk goats behind the house so they could graze around the pond. That meant putting up the portable electric fencing. About an hour after the job was completed, we saw a turkey hen frantically pacing back and forth on the pond side of the fencing. Mike realized it was the turkey hen that had been setting on a nest by the garden. A setting hen will leave the nest once a day to eat and drink, and apparently Mike had put up the fencing while the hen was in the chicken house having breakfast.

Mike and Margaret (still home from U of I until her summer class starts next week) went out there to help the turkey hen get back to her nest so she could continue setting and hatch her brood. They hoped to either catch her or at last scare her enough so that she would fly over the fence. Neither of those things happened. When they tried to catch her, she did get scared and fly -- but in the opposite direction of the fencing, which landed her right in the pond!

Perhaps like me, you've always assumed that turkeys can't swim. Well, although they don't exactly swim, they don't sink either. She was just floating in the pond. Mike mumbled a couple of words that I won't repeat and said he needed to get his chest waders. A couple of minutes later, he was walking into the pond. We hadn't noticed yet, but Julia the pig had been watching the whole show, and when Mike started walking into the pond, she followed him. She was walking, walking, walking, and then she went swoosh and was under water. I was laughing too hard to get a picture as she took a turn to the right and started walking back up the bank of the pond. As she came up from the water, a sheet of algae settled on top of her head and back, and Margaret and I laughed hysterically as she looked like a sea monster emerging from the pond. Mike had been concentrating on the turkey and had no idea Julia was following him, so he was rather confused about why Margaret and I were laughing hard enough to injure ourselves.

It all had a happy ending as Julia managed to rid herself of the algae, and Mike placed the turkey hen on the opposite side of the fence so she could get back to setting on her nest.