Saying Goodbye to Drumstick
- Mar 16
- 10 min read
The Turkey Years
When we first started keeping birds, we had a romantic idea of what it meant to be self-sufficient.
It was after COVID, when people were suddenly thinking about scarcity and emergency preparedness. One of the reasons we wanted land when we moved to Tennessee was the idea that we could grow more of our own food. I also love learning new skills, and there was something appealing about doing real farm work—getting up early, working in all kinds of weather, and knowing we had food in the freezer because we had raised it ourselves.
First came the chickens. Then the ducks.
Then my husband decided it would be a great idea to raise heritage turkeys for Thanksgiving.
I just liked birds.
We had never even seen turkeys up close before. But we had figured out chickens and ducks, so how hard could it be?
We brought home three chicks, not knowing the sex. They turned out to be two toms and one hen: Drumstick, Cranberry, and Stuffing.
Two of them were supposed to become Thanksgiving dinner.
The third one was mine. I just hadn’t decided which one yet.
Turkeys Are Not Chickens
Turkeys grow much faster than chickens, and they can jump much higher. But the biggest difference is that chickens like to roost.
Turkeys need to roost.
Within a few weeks those three tiny chicks were crowding their brooder and launching themselves out in search of the highest possible perch.
Did I mention I had bought chicken chicks at the same time?
It was a handful.
I soon had two brooders going. The turkeys insisted on escaping theirs and joining the chickens in the other one. When I finally covered the chicken brooder with wire, the turkeys simply roosted on top of the wire... or moved it out of the way.
That was my first real introduction to turkeys.
The Fighting Toms
As Drumstick and Cranberry matured, the harmless puffing and strutting started to turn into something more serious.
If you’ve never seen two male turkeys fight, it’s not something you want to watch when you’ve raised them from chicks. They grab each other’s snoods and pull each other around by them. Sometimes they jump and try to spur each other.
It looks less like a barnyard squabble and more like a duel at sunset.
Fortunately we already had two paddocks, so we separated the toms. Stuffing ignored the arrangement entirely and visited both whenever she pleased.
The Blueberry Hatch
The following spring, Stuffing disappeared under the blueberry bushes and came back with four tiny poults.
They were unbelievably cute.
Unfortunately, they were all boys.
That group included a turkey I later named Ima—short for I’m a survivor.
When he was still young he developed Blackhead disease.
Healthy turkeys stand tall and alert. Sick ones hunch down and seem to shrink into themselves. Ima’s breathing was labored and his droppings turned watery and a harsh yellow color that told me something was very wrong.
I started researching symptoms online and eventually narrowed it down to Blackhead. There isn’t nearly as much information available about treating turkeys as there is about chickens, so a lot of it felt like detective work.
I found an anti-protozoal medication online and worked out the dosing.
Getting medicine into a turkey who isn’t eating is not simple.
There was a liquid mixture that had to be given by syringe, carefully so it didn’t go down the trachea. There was also a pill I tried to hide in food, though that only worked sometimes. When he refused food completely, I mixed powder into softer feed and hoped he would take a few bites.
For several days he had a fever and no appetite.
I treated him in the cold and checked on him constantly.
He survived.
And he eventually became the gentlest bird of that entire batch.
Learning to Let Some Go
Those four boys eventually grew into adolescents, and I knew I couldn’t keep them all.
I listed them for sale and a man arrived in a rather worn SUV. He had planned to buy two, but since that was all the cash he had with him, he ended up taking three—everyone except Ima. I couldn’t give him up.
The man carried them out upside down by their feet and loaded two into the back compartment and one into the back seat.
I remember thinking the interior of that vehicle would probably never be the same after that trip—not that it looked very attractive in the first place.
That sale didn’t sit particularly well with me.
The Turkey ICU
The next year Stuffing tried again.
This time she collected more than 25 eggs in a nest box in the hay barn. I thought I was helping by giving her a sheltered place.
Instead it turned into the most chaotic hatch of the entire adventure.
There were simply too many eggs. They shifted and settled against the cardboard sides of the box. Some broke with developing chicks inside. Some hatched early. Others were fully formed but were crushed simply because there wasn’t enough room.
At one point Stuffing stepped off the nest entirely, and I knew if I left the eggs there they would never hatch.
So I gathered every egg that still looked viable and carried them into the basement. Some went under a broody chicken in the coop. The rest went under heat lamps in what quickly became something that looked less like a brooder and more like a turkey neo-natal unit.
For a while my basement felt like a poultry ICU.
I used a small egg candler to check the eggs. If you hold a bright light against the shell in a dark room, you can actually see what’s happening inside. The undeveloped eggs look empty, but the healthy ones glow with veins and movement. When the chicks are far enough along, you can even see their tiny hearts beating.
As hatch time gets closer, you sometimes hear faint peeping from inside the egg.
That’s when they’re pipping—the moment a chick breaks the inner membrane and starts tapping a hole in the shell. Often the first thing you see is just the tip of a tiny beak pushing through.
After that they rest. Sometimes for hours.
While they’re resting, something important is happening inside the egg. The chick is absorbing the last of the yolk sac into its body, which becomes its food supply for the first day or two after it hatches. It’s also finishing the work of pulling away from the membrane’s blood supply.
From there the chick slowly works its way around the egg until it can push the shell apart and emerge.
But it’s delicate work. If the membrane inside the egg dries out, the chick can become exhausted or even get stuck and die. Normally, hatching happens inside a carefully controlled incubator—or under a broody turkey.
I didn’t have either..
So I was trying to keep the eggs warm under a heat lamp while also keeping the membrane moist enough to help the chicks finish hatching.
Often I sat there watching those eggs, feeling both relieved and nervous. Relieved because I knew the chick was still alive, but anxious about whether it would have enough strength to make it all the way around the shell.
Sometimes a chick would stop for so long that I worried it might be stuck. I would carefully peel away the tiniest bit of shell with tweezers, but only after checking for any sign of red veins or blood. I tried not to rush them.
They needed to do most of the work themselves in order to come out strong.
So I waited. And listened. And hoped.
When they finally pushed free of the shell, they were unbelievably tiny—wet, scraggly, and wobbling on legs that didn’t seem quite ready to hold them yet. They struggled to stand, collapsed again, then tried once more.
I found myself talking to them while they hatched.
The hatching didn’t all happen at once. The first chick arrived on May 24, the first turkey the next day, and the last one didn’t emerge until May 31. For nearly a week my basement revolved around eggs, heat lamps, peeping sounds, and the constant question of who might hatch next.
I was actually supposed to be in Illinois that weekend for a baby shower, but by then I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. There were too many tiny lives halfway into the world for me to leave.
Sunny and Aspen were part of that basement hatch, and from the beginning they seemed to know my voice. Sometimes they would lie right in my hand and fall asleep there, exhausted from the effort of getting out of the egg.
They still do something similar today. If I pick one of them up and sit down in the paddock with her, she’ll settle onto my lap and lie there quietly while I stroke her feathers. They don’t both try at once—my lap certainly isn’t that big. Sunny, who was always the most attached, usually lies down right below my chair when Aspen is up there.
When I stroke their feathers, they close their eyes.
It’s hard not to feel responsible for a bird when you've watched it come into the world like that.
By the time the dust settled, I had nine baby turkeys and five baby chickens growing in brooders in my basement.
Not all of them made it.
One poult that had partially hatched in the straw arrived with fly strike. Under my jewelry task light I spent more than half an hour removing maggots with tweezers and flushing the wound, trying to keep that tiny body warm at the same time.
That little bird survived the maggots.
But several days later it drowned.
Raising animals has a way of humbling you.
In the end, five of the nine turkeys survived those early weeks.
The Perfect Trio
By August of 2025 I knew I had too many birds.
Around that time I had been getting advice from a woman who worked at the local feed store. She raises all kinds of livestock and had patiently answered more than a few of my turkey questions.
When I mentioned I might need to sell some birds, she was interested.
That August she came out and bought Cranberry, Stuffing, Ima, and Barney.
After that sale, I was left with what felt like the perfect breeding group—Drumstick and three hens.
For the first time since we had started raising turkeys, everything felt balanced.
Drumstick
Drumstick was beautiful in the sunlight. His body feathers ranged from silver to gray to black, silky soft to the touch, with a bronze iridescence that flashed when the light hit just right.
His tail feathers fanned out in layers edged in white.
When he strutted, his wings dropped low beside him and the long feathers brushed stiffly through the grass with a distinctive rustling sound.
His strut had its own rhythm: slow deliberate steps, then a few quick ones, like a dance.
He circled me constantly in the paddock, sometimes leaving the hens behind entirely. I could stand there talking to someone and suddenly realize he was still down there circling and strutting as if he had been putting on the show just for me.
His head was bluish white and bright red, covered in wrinkles. His snood often hung long over his beak, which made eating tricky. More than once he accidentally pecked his own snood before figuring out where the food was.
For a bird with such a powerful beak, he ate surprisingly carefully.
And he absolutely refused to eat treats off the ground. If I wanted him to have any, I had to feed them to him from a cup.
Unless I caught him to move him somewhere, he was almost always puffed up like that.
Completely convinced he owned the place.
Or maybe just me.
Saying Goodbye
Earlier this year one of the hens, Aspen, was injured by a spur. It forced me to admit something I had been ignoring: I wasn’t really set up for long-term turkey breeding.
Protecting Aspen meant making a decision.
So a few weeks ago, I sold Drumstick and one of his daughters, Sky. Sunny and Aspen are staying.
When it was time, the buyer lifted Drumstick into the crate beside Sky. He didn’t fight it. It happened quickly.
After she drove away I walked over to the paddock and stood there for a minute.
Sunny and Aspen were still moving around as usual, but the place felt strangely empty without him.
I eventually went to find my husband, who was out pruning the fruit trees. It was a beautiful sunny day.
Later, when I went inside, I caught myself looking out my office window more than once, expecting to see Drumstick strutting around down there.
And realizing he wasn’t.
A Season
While we were standing in the paddock earlier, the woman buying the turkeys told me about her farm. She raises cattle, pigs, goats, ducks, and turkeys. They process their own meat. She described cooking duck in two pans so the fat renders properly.
Listening to her talk, my first thought was simply how much there still is to learn.
Later I realized something else.
She has spent a lifetime building that life.
I’m 58, and what I have here is more of a season.
Chickens, ducks, turkeys, fruit trees, a garden, a horse—five years of learning and figuring things out along the way.
I’ve discovered I do have grit when things go wrong. I can handle a crisis. I can research a disease and keep a sick bird alive.
But doing the hardest parts of farm life every day for decades is something else entirely.
Sometimes I feel wistful that our place isn’t set up exactly the way I would like. We’ve made improvements and we’ll keep making small ones. But I don’t want to spend all my energy getting everything perfect only to find myself too tired to enjoy it.
In a funny way, it reminds me of the turkeys.
After two hatches and a lot of trial and error, I finally ended up with the perfect breeding trio.
And that was exactly the moment I realized it was time to stop.
Not because the experience wasn’t worth it.
But because it already was.
These days when I look out my office window, the paddock feels a little bigger without Drumstick down there strutting around like he owns the place.
Or maybe like he owned me.
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