My pet turkey waiting for our bike ride.
Oct 28, 2026–As pets go, I’m a goldfish guy. They don’t require walking or vet visits, they don’t bark all night, and when they inevitably cross the Rainbow Waterfall, you have many easy, low-cost disposal options.
So it is surprising my favorite pet was a turkey.
Here’s how it happened.
Our vet posted that she had a free chick someone had brought in, and would give it to anyone wanting to raise it. Baby chicks require a lot of nurturing to bring them to egg-laying age, so it is a commitment. But I called and said I’d take it.
The young chicken had unknown ancestry. It was mottled brown and looked like any other poult we had raised.
I took it home, and put it in with our other chicks. But this one grew. And it kept growing.
It was like The Ugly Duckling. Within a few weeks I realized it was not a chicken. It was not a duck. It was not a swan. It was a turkey. A wild turkey chick.
I went ahead and raised it with the intent to release it back to one of the passing bands of its species. Of course, anyone who has seen a documentary on The Animal Channel can predict what happened: the poult decided I was its flock.
I tried keeping it with my grown hens, but it didn’t work. The hens resented her, and the turkey didn’t enjoy being cooped up. Every evening I had to try to catch her and physically toss her back into the coop. She soon grew too large, too quick, and too wily for me to even catch her at night. So I gave up and let her roost in her favorite live oak tree.
Still, during the day she was my constant companion. She waited for me at the back door every morning. When I was working at my barn office, she would be nestled on the ground just outside the French doors, keeping me in sight. She followed me round the farm like a puppy.
There were times she roamed. Once, we didn’t see her for 3 days. I assumed she had Free Willied herself, but then my daughter came in saying she had heard a rustling noise in the yard. It came from an overturned plastic turtle sandbox lid. When we lifted the lid, there she was. Other than her feelings, she was unhurt from her ordeal in solitude. I never could imagine a scenario that would lead to her being sequestered under a plastic turtle sandbox lid.
In a matter of months I grew accustomed to her presence. I am not a dog or cat person. But I found myself buoyed by having her around. She demanded little – no feeding, litterboxes, daily walks, or petting. Being near me seemed enough.
My pet turkey waiting outside my office door while I write.
Alas, like every story of this type, it had to end in a Bambi-like manner. I still tried catching her every evening and putting her in the coop. But one night she was already up in a tree, roosting higher than my ladder could reach. Good night, sweet birdie, turned into “bye bye birdie.”
The next morning, she was not at the back door. On my short walk to my barn office, I saw the reason. Right under the limb she had roosted on, lay a handful of feathers. One of our Hill Country predators had found our friend and carried her away overnight.
I was more shaken than I thought. I chastised myself for not trying harder to catch her. But I couldn’t justify keeping her literally cooped up constantly. That is hardly the life for a wild turkey.
For several years I tried finding another wild bird to raise. Alas, you don’t trip over abandoned nests in the wild. My daughter bought me two white turkey poults. But it wasn’t the same.
Domestication breeds out the spark. And it is the spark that makes life interesting.