How Have Chickens and Turkeys Managed to Survive?

I love our animals, but every now and then I genuinely find myself wondering how poultry birds have managed to survive as a group.

I know our chickens and turkeys have been bred for generations and aren’t really comparable to their wild relatives, but still…

The other day our Faverolles rooster somehow managed to step into an empty cardboard box.

Then he just stood there, looking completely bewildered.

He walked around in circles, examined the sides of the box and seemed to accept that this was simply his new home. I stood next to him waiting for him to remember that he was equipped with two perfectly functional wings.

After a few minutes of deep contemplation, he finally reached the same conclusion. One cautious flap later he was out of the box and strolling away as if nothing had happened.

Then there’s Cletus.

One evening it was time to round up the birds and put everyone away for the night.

Everybody came.

Except Cletus.

We called for him. We searched the barn. We walked around the entire pasture several times, checking behind bushes and every outbuilding we could find.

Eventually we gave up and decided we’d continue looking once it was daylight.

The next morning we found him standing in the middle of the tall grass.

Cletus isn’t exactly a small bird. He’s a huge Bronze turkey tom, big enough that you’d think it would be impossible to lose him.

Somehow he’d managed to camouflage himself so well that we’d walked right past him the evening before.

He appeared to have slept perfectly well.

No stress.

No panic about spending the night alone.

No obvious desire to get back to the ladies on the other side of the field.

He calmly stood up, stretched his wings and casually wandered back as though the entire search operation had been a problem we’d invented ourselves.

Since searching for Cletus seems to have become a recurring activity, we decided to do something about the patch of stinging nettles outside the chicken coop.

Looking for a turkey is much easier when you don’t have to fight your way through waist-high nettles.

According to the breed description, turkeys are supposed to enjoy eating stinging nettles.

Apparently, ours never got that memo.

So Pär dug them up instead.

It quickly became the day’s most popular entertainment.

Before he’d gotten very far, both the turkeys and the Faverolles rooster were standing beside him, watching the excavation with great interest. Although, to be fair, the real enthusiasm didn’t begin until the first earthworms started appearing.

I don’t know whether it’s the soil here in southern Sweden or whether everything is simply bigger down here, but the earthworms are enormous compared to what I grew up with.

The poultry birds had clearly noticed that too. Every worm disappeared almost as quickly as Pär managed to dig it up.

Oddly enough, none of them seemed to think they should help with the digging.

Pär looked quite pleased with himself as well.

He has a well-documented need to dig things up—preferably by hand—so I suppose this counts as therapy.

At least it’s considerably less dangerous than when he decides to climb trees with a chainsaw.