one turkey gone today

We let the turkeys out of the pen today to see what they would do. Sure enough they headed straight to the sheep shelter. So, we installed the rest of the electric fence to block off a third of the sheep pasture, and connected the electric charger. Then we moved the turkeys back inside that portion in their pen. When we let them out again, most stayed in, a few flew over the electric fence, and one unfortunate tom flew the other way into the horse pasture. He was stuck behind the center line fence as turkeys get stuck, unable to fly back over. He just walked back and forth at the fence crying for his friends.

Then things took a turn for the worse. Louie, our springer spaniel, took an interest in this one lost bird, and must have thought he was fair game. He started chasing the turkey. I made him stop and sent Louie out of the pasture, then went on about my business. Soon Louie couldn't resist, snuck in the pasture and started attacking the bird. By the time someone noticed what was happening, Louie had the turkey pinned down to the ground. We pulled Louie off and the turkey was able to walk. Unfortunately, he had serious damage. All of the skin on his right side from the neck line to the feet was torn off. Some of the wing bone was exposed and his breast and leg were completely exposed. Oddly there wasn't much blood loss.

At first I thought we could try to save him and placed him in the barn to heal. But, on closer inspection and realizing the extent of the wounds, it became clear that there was no way to prevent infection with such a huge gaping wound. He was obviously in a huge amount of pain and acting as if dazed. If we tried to save him, and he didn't make it due to inevitable infection, he would be wasted since we cant use a bird that dies from infection. So, there was only one choice. We put together a makeshift butchering station and put him out of his misery.

The good news out of this is that we were able to save most of the bird's meat to eat. We needed some poultry since lately we have been forced to buy poultry from the store (ack!).  I was also happy this happened to a tom and not one of our breeding hens. Nevertheless it was a sad thing to have to deal with.