Don't Count Your Chickens

"Don't count your chickens before they are hatched" is how the saying goes. And the same can be said for turkeys. The history of that saying comes from an Aesop Fable known as The Milkmaid And Her Pail. According to Trivia-Library.com, it goes like this.


Patty, a farmer's daughter, is daydreaming as she walks to town with a pail of milk balanced on her head. Her thoughts: "The milk in this pail will provide me with cream, which I will make into butter, which I will sell in the market, and buy a dozen eggs, which will hatch into chickens, which will lay more eggs, and soon I shall have a large poultry yard. I'll sell some of the fowls and buy myself a handsome new gown and go to the fair, and when the young fellows try to make love to me, I'll toss my head and pass them by." At that moment, Patty tossed her head and lost the pailful of milk. Her mother admonished, "Do not count your chickens before they are hatched."

"So where am I going with this?" you ask. Several weeks ago I made a post about Turkeys that I received in the mail. I ordered 6 and received 11 of them surmising that the hatchery planned a high mortality rate. When they arrived they all looked like baby chicks although the 5 extra ones were a different color. I'm thinking this is a great windfall if they all survive. Well so far they have all survived and are thriving. They are all out of the brooder and on pasture. However the six that I ordered actually look like turkeys and the five extras are Rhode Island Red Roosters. What I have learned is that those roosters were sent along as sort of "packing peanuts" to keep the turkeys warm. I've tried separating the roosters from the turkeys by putting them in the chicken yard with the laying hens but they are having none of that. They insist on finding their way back to the Turkey yard and so there they will stay until Thanksgiving.


Eleven Turkeys? arrive in the mail




These are definitely turkeys



Hmmm, what's wrong with this picture?