Rural Intelligence bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: Is it the sweltering weather or is it the time of year that explains the cacophony of animal sounds engulfing the house these past few days? The relentless dah deh dah dah song of the French guinea fowl from their portable pasture pen is particularly irritating. Why, I wonder, do they have only that one song? And what do they derive from repeating it practically twenty four hours a day? Infinitely easier to bear are the periodic eruptions of high pitched gobbling from our hundred or so adolescent turkeys, and the gentle gabbling of the Rouen ducks contentedly grazing behind the chicken yard. I must admit that the almost motor-like communal sound of the garrulous Toulouse geese falls about midway on my pleasure/pain sound barometer. I do, however, find the baa-ing and maa-ing of our Karakul sheep comforting, to my ears like the soft baby sounds emanating from a maternity ward.
But last night it was the cattle that won the vocal contest. Yesterday afternoon was weaning time at Turkana Farms as our two calves were run into an adjoining pasture, separated for the first time from their mamas and pa, by an electric fence. The concerned parents have yet to quiet down as they stand bellowing pathetically, helplessly looking across the fence at their offspring, who, of course, are bellowing back. It is touching to see the degree of devotion and attachment these animals have to each other. Even Tommy, the bull, is lamenting the separation from his offspring. So loud and continuous was the bovine hullabaloo last night that a neighbor two farms over from us called this morning concerned that we might be having problems. And still the cattle chorus goes on. I am thankful that the house is as far away from the pasture as it is, and that its walls are lined with bricks set on edge, “noggins” the locals call them On hearing the brouhaha, my first thought was “The cows’ grief and outrage is such natural behavior”, by which I meant, of course, it was so human-like. But then what happened yesterday with the turkeys was, I guess, natural behavior as well. A few weeks ago one of our large Narragansetts was overcome with some kind of neurological attack, still not diagnosed, that left it unable to stand or walk. This condition left it vulnerable. I found it on my rounds-- a sad, bloodied, feathery heap, in bad shape brutally pecked, especially about its head, by the flock. While turkeys are usually amongst the friendliest and most pacific of our menagerie, they seem to have no tolerance for any sign of a handicap or abnormal behavior. Their instinct seems to be to destroy anything in the flock that is out of the norm. And they are not alone in this. Even our gentle ducks earlier in the summer practically pecked to death a crippled duck, apparently unable to tolerate its desperate, spastic movements. And with each litter of pigs we have learned to expect that there will be one designated the runt who is mercilessly attacked by the rest and kept at bay from the feeding trough. We were able to rescue the injured Narraganset , medicate its wounds, and isolate it in a barn stall. Day by day, it showed steady improvement to the point where finally, though still wobbly, it could fly out of the stall. Since there is nothing so miserable as a flock animal by itself, I thought it was time to reunite it with its kind. As it cautiously rejoined the flock, at first all seemed well. It was approached in a friendly manner and given a howdy do by its fellow turkeys and seemingly accepted back into the flock. But after I left, at some point in the morning, the turkeys’ darker instincts apparently kicked in, and the flock ganged up on it, and savagely pecked it to death. Arriving too late to save it, I was initially horrified, but then had to conclude philosophically that this too is natural behavior. This event caused my mind to shift back to the mid 1960’s, to the graduate student housing complex where I lived with my then wife and two infant daughters, Jessica and Heather. It was Easter time and one of the children in the complex had just gotten a tiny, live, white bunny for the occasion. A crowd of twenty some infants from the complex gathered excitedly on the lawn in a circle around the bunny, and seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly. Or so the parents thought. But shortly after, much to her horror, one of the mothers emerged from her apartment to find the infants in a frenzy stomping the bunny to death. The entire complex was shaken for days by what was generally regarded as an unthinkable, unnatural happening. This all brings to mind certain unfortunate incidents at American high schools lately involving bullying cliques of students that have driven harassed outcast students to suicide. It has occurred to me that it is at adolescence that humans are most flock or herd-like in their behavior. As I go about my chores at the farm, I am increasingly intrigued by these disturbing parallels between human and animal behavior. And by the question of what is “natural.”—Peter DaviesFor the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
