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Esperanza / Hope

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March 23, 2026

Three Spanish black turkeys: Ursula (hen), Octavia (hen), and Gerald (tom)

It’s the equinox-ish. And what better way to celebrate balance than by throwing my entire life completely off balance?

My mother had a saying: no more pets or kids. In my adult life, post children, fully in charge of the number of pets and/or children I am allowed to acquire, I am refusing to learn this lesson. Instead, in the midst of a potential world war, on top of the teetering tower of the rest of the current spate of atrocities, I choose chaos. In the form of turkeys.

It started with the roosters. Oh sure! I told my housemate, when she inquired about helping my broody hen hatch out some chicks. Who am I to deprive a caring human the experience of midwifing a clutch? Of course, it’s all fun and games until 3/4 of the baby chicks end up being roosters. As a result, after three years of maintaining and/or slowly decreasing the size of the flock by attrition, I have been thrown fully back into chicken math over here, folks. Plotting to hatch more (hopeful) hens to balance the rooster ratio, my housemate has loaded up the incubator with a variety of DEFINITELY fully fertilized eggs. We all know how this story ends, but, again, what kind of ghoul would I be to deprive a human of this particular kind of joy?

Her enthusiasm gave me a mild fever that spiked when she mentioned a friend had a trio of Black Spanish turkeys she was looking to sell. Two hens, and a tom, about seven months old. Y’all? Y’ALL?!?! I have been looking for a lady friend for Tom, unsuccessfully, for YEARS. I figured maybe I could take all three in and rehome the tom, or maybe the tom and one of the hens, if they didn’t mesh with the flock, or with Tom.

Well, they seem to be meshing pretty well with the flock of chickens, but Tom and the new tom (who is called Gerald. AKA Jerry the tom, just to make it even more confusing) are only interested in fisticuffs.

So, I have basically been coming up with different solutions every day to keep the toms apart. At first, we had a dog crate in the middle of the yard that we covered with a blanket. Gerald the Tom lived there at night and for part of the day, while Tommy strutted around and around, taunting him. Completely ignoring the hens, but strutting and preening and taunting the tom. Sigh.

It didn’t take long for the toms to start tangling with each other through the bars of the crate, so I let Tom out of the yard to strut around the driveway. However, the minute he wasn’t being supervised, he strutted back over near the yard and got tangled up in the fence. I found him wrapped in poultry netting, taking a pummeling from Jerry. Poor Tommy. This, of course, would not do.

To tell you the truth, Tom doesn’t even seem the slightest bit interested in any of those turkeys. However, by this time, Ursula has already endeared herself to us by quickly figuring out how to escape the pen through a hole in the fence, following us up on the porch and sitting next to us, chirping happily, waiting to be petted like a dog. And, though not quite as sociable, Octavia is inquisitive, intelligent, and sweet; and Gerald is completely non-aggressive – even in the midst of his Tom-pummeling, he relented to being picked up and carried away with no argument. All three of them figured out how to put themselves up in the coop with the chickens within three days of living here. In other words, I am smitten with the lot of them, and will simply have to find a solution.

Before the snow returned, I was herding Tommy into the back yard with Ursula (who followed like a dog, singing me her happy little chirpy song the whole way) for the day, then herding them back to the coop at night, after putting Gerald back into his crate. Which is a lot, and not sustainable when I’m working until 9 PM.

I could try to leave the turkeys in the back yard, but the problem with this plan, long-term, is Wilbur. While Wilbur is not aggressive, he has chased and pounced on chickens who have flown back into the yard before. I’m not sure how much of that was caused by Lulu’s insane prey drive, or his own. When I have Wilbur out on a leash in the yard, he pays no attention to the birds, but I fear if they startle him, it may trigger something. If he were to chase down Tommy, I can’t be certain who would win that fight. Have you ever seen a turkey talon? And did you know they also fight with their wings? Those wing feathers are like daggers!

When the storm hit, I just set up a crate on the porch for Tommy and he’s our temporary porch turkey now. My brain is still churning a myriad of other solutions, but it’s back to work for me tomorrow, so Tommy might remain a porch turkey for the forseeable future. It’s a pretty big porch, and he’s a fairly sedentary bird, so he should be ok. In the meantime, I’m bringing Wilbur out on the porch, leashed, to get everyone acquainted and used to each other while I scheme various living arrangements.

As of now, my plan is to build some sort of aviary back there for Tom and maybe Ursula, as well as a few of my older hens who really don’t deserve to have to live with a bunch of roosters. For crying out loud, I was out in the yard the other day, and a harried Little Nellie literally flew a hundred yards and landed on my forearm like a falcon just to get away from one of the horny offspring THAT SHE RAISED!

It will be really nice if I can train the chase/pounce tendencies out of Wilbur so I can give him a job as poultry protector instead of my 24/7 shadow. So, that’s what I’ll probably be doing all spring/summer when I should be gardening.

Anyway, maybe my mom wasn’t right about EVERYTHING, and what good is balance in a perpetually imbalanced world. I choose tur-chaos!