The first dino quality that Doodle has polished since her infancy is the dinosaur talon. At one point, we thought that we could train her to be okay with a nail trimming every once in a while so that she doesn't accidentally gore us someday. She doesn't mind having her feet messed with at all, in fact, she enjoys a good foot rub. Pictured here are the talons shortly after I washed them, because Doodle is not adverse to marching around in her poo, no matter how much I beg, plead, and whine. Regardless of her enjoying me messing with her feet, though, once-upon-a-misadventure, Doodle kicked something and managed to knock the tip (and just the tip) off a toenail... the result was much blood and trauma. Blood on Doodle's behalf. Trauma on mine. So, no, the talons will not be clipped after all.
Doodle is also a lot more feathery than when last you saw her. Strangely, her Jurassic feathers seem to be coming in curly, giving her a very mangy appearance. I'm not sure if this is genetic (like the
Frizzle of chicken variety) or if it's some kind of deficiency problem I have inadvertently caused by my Turkey ignorance. Anyone with Turkey wisdom out there, please drop a comment and let me know your thoughts!
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| Dino Preen |
Doodle has upgraded from the brooder. She now lives in a renovated parrot cage. She seems to like it well enough. My one complaint with the set up is that it's not really ideal for setting up some bedding for her to scratch in, and she does so love to scratch in bedding... We must make do until she's ready for the outdoor enclosure, I suppose. As you can see, her turkey neck is lengthening, and now has that little flap at her throat. When she's experiencing any strong emotion, that flap and her whole face turns light red. (Disclaimer, still don't know if Doodle is a boy or a girl, but I'm calling her a she for the sake of not using uber confusing pronouns instead). Yesterday she was introduced to a toy car that lit up and made car noises. Doodle's face went as red as I've ever seen it and she started making a
turkey purr. I haven't heard that noise since she was a tiny chick and I was cradling and singing to her. That's what earned her the nickname Cricket, because it sounded like a little cricket trilling away. Her voice has gotten a lot deeper since then, so the noise caused quite a stir as we all tried to figure out what it meant. She seemed happy and peaceful enough, but her head had turned red (which usually only happens when she wants to play-fight). After finding out that the noise expresses contentment (which seemed to correspond to her behaviour) we decided that the reddening of her face must mean that
whatever she is feeling, she is feeling it
strongly.
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| Dino Sleeps |
In the above picture, all Doodle is feeling is ZZZZZzzzzzz, so her face is white...... though, it has changed colours in her sleep, evidence to me that turkeys, like dogs, cats, and people, do in fact dream.
I am happy to have found that website I linked to in reference to the purrs, because, even though it's a hunter site, it will help me to know what Doodle is saying and also what to call those noises of hers. The cutt, for example, I've just been calling her "excited-video-game-blaster-beep-noise". Her famous nerve-grating lost cry is called a kee kee, apparently.
In other news, Doodle got siblings today! Four teeny-tiny brand new baby turkeys came in the mail today. We didn't want Doodle to be alone, since turkeys are such social birds, so we ordered some company for her. The feed store was out of turkeys when we went back, so we just ordered some heritage birds from Cackle Hatchery (by the way, if it turns out Doodle is a broad-breasted bronze*, I'm going to cry so many tears, it'll fill up the ocean. I don't think she is, though. She doesn't have hearty enough an appetite to be a BBB, methinks). They don't ship until June, though, so Doodle had almost a month to get to be eight times the size of her siblings. We set up their brooder close to her cage so she can see them though. More on that in my next post!
*Broad-breasted varieties of turkeys were specifically bred for the food industry, so they grow too heavy for themselves and usually suffer from all sorts of debilitating health conditions by the time they're two years old, hence they're usually slaughtered at about 6 months. This out of the 15 years turkeys are supposed to be able to live!
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