If you’ve read my previous posts, you might be wondering how things are going for my female turkey. In my June 3rd post entitled, “Birds of a Feather” I explained how she hatched chicken eggs last spring and went on to raise the chicks as if they were her very own.
Well, the two hens she managed to raise to adulthood are doing just fine, thanks, but they do seem to have some identity issues. The other chickens, who clearly view the turkey-raised hens as chickens, are all perfectly willing to accept the turkey-girls into their flock, but the turkey-girls are very skittish around the chickens. After all, their turkey mother continues to attack any chicken who gets too close to her precious chicken-daughters.
So I guess it turns out my female turkey is something of a racist after all, though in a weird way. Sure, she was perfectly willing to raise chickens as if they were her own offspring, but now she doesn’t want her daughters to have anything to do with those nasty chickens, even though her daughters are, in fact, chickens.
It’s sort of sad, really. You’d think a chicken raised by a turkey would be more open-minded, inclusive, and tolerant of other species, but the turkey/chickens just seem confused. Instead of having friends in both the turkey world and the chicken world, those two hens don’t have any friends in either world, and with Mama Turkey continuously telling her girls that chickens are inferior creatures, the two turkey-raised hens spend most of their days off by themselves.
Oh, well. Maybe there just isn’t any easy way around racism, or speciesism, or any sort of prejudicism. Maybe the best any of us can hope for is to find a couple of critters we can stand to be around who can also stand to be around us, regardless of race, creed, color, or species.
As for the turkey-raised chicken girls, well, I think the real test will come when the rooster decides to do what roosters do, whether a hen is raised by turkeys, humans, or aardvarks.
I’ll bet Mama Turkey isn’t going to approve of that at all. . .
Leave a Reply