In our first effort to make the pasture more appealing to the turkeys... We built this odd looking "tree". Hopefully we can convince them to roost on it.
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I managed to get a few more than half of the turkeys to stay at the coop around nightfall. That was a real chore! these birds are stubborn.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately they didnt roost on the tree, instead they headed inside the coop.
no luck yet making them return to the roost. these turkeys still strongly prefer to sleep on the hseep shelter by the orchard. i have a decoy turkey form the sports shop that might help attract them. i'm also considering completely blocking off the western corner of hte turkey pasture until the give up trying to exit there. one thing i notice is that these guys are very much creatures of habit. creating a new habit is easy, breaking an old habit is hard.
ReplyDeleteupdate: finally we gained a little success in getting the turkeys to nest in the artificial tree.
ReplyDeleteFirst we attempted to contain the turkeys in the pasture by adding some plastic orange temp fencing inside the electric fence. That did delay them, but not contain them.
So what I started doing is feeding them under the turkey tree in the late afternoons, just before sundown. after a few days of this I tried again to encourage them to not leave when they were done eating. Standing there with my large white "turkey stick" (a white plastic gutter piece) I would block them at the first sign of a desire to leave. This time it worked! they tried to sneak around me a few times but never got far enough to take flight. as the sun darkened they finally started looking to roost where they were.
first one, then two, then four, one by one they flew up to the roost. The girls went first. at then end of the sunset there were 19 turkeys on the roost, 2 on the top of hte pen, and the rest went inside the coop.
one discovery, it is too high. the toms are already too big to fly up that high. I witnesses one attempt and miss by a few inches. another made it but counldnt hold on and fell off.
so, the next step is to add some "branches" to the sides about halfway down to help them climb up.
at leat i wont be chasing them out of the yard this morning!