A dad's guide to the elusive baby turkey (and weaning woes)

It was 5:17 in the morning when the farm animal flap-book aggressively entered my peripheral vision, wielded by Twin A, who had somehow escaped her sleeping bag and decided that the pre-dawn darkness was the ideal time for agricultural education. She slammed the heavy cardboard onto my chest, pointed a sticky finger at an illustration of a large, hideous bird, and confidently shouted, "Baby t!" I assumed for a brief, sleep-deprived second that she was referencing an obscure 90s rapper, until I squinted and realised she was pointing at the turkey, demanding to know the name of its offspring. I lay there in the gloom, trapped under a toddler and a duvet smelling faintly of old milk, wondering what's a baby turkey called, exactly, because my brain offered absolutely nothing beyond "turklet," which sounded like a terrible appetiser at a chain pub.

I reached for my phone, squinting against the blinding light of the search engine, and embarked on a journey that would somehow span etymology, the darkest corners of poultry homesteading forums, and traumatic flashbacks to the time I tried to feed these exact children pureed meat.

Falling down the farm trivia rabbit hole

As it turns out, the internet claims that the proper term is a "poult," which sounds less like a bird and more like an archaic Victorian disease (as in, "I'm sorry, vicar, I can't attend church today, I've come down with the poults"). Apparently, wildlife biologists believe that a mother turkey and her poults actually start chattering to each other through the shell before the things even hatch. I found this deeply upsetting, mostly because my twins didn't start communicating until they were out, and even then it was just a series of varied, deafening screeches that I had to decode through trial and error.

The farming forums told me that if a poult wanders off into the long grass, it emits a highly specific, desperate "lost call" so the mother can track it down. I felt a sudden, big kinship with the mother turkey, because my girls also have a lost call, which they deploy exclusively when they've hurled their favourite teething toy out of the pram onto the filthy pavement of the High Street.

Speaking of things being hurled onto the pavement, this is probably a good time to mention the one item that actually saved my sanity during those dreadful early teething months: the Panda Teether. We've all been there with the endless drool and the screaming, and while I generally despise baby gear that looks like it belongs in a neon circus, this little silicone panda was a godsend. It has these brilliantly textured bamboo-shaped bits that the girls used to gnaw on with the ferocity of starved wolves. It’s flat enough that their tiny, uncoordinated hands could actually grip it without repeatedly dropping it on their own faces, which is a surprisingly common design flaw in other teethers. I used to just chuck it in the dishwasher with the coffee mugs, pulling it out pristine and ready for another day of being relentlessly chewed. If your baby is currently trying to eat their own fists or the arm of your sofa, I highly suggest securing one of these immediately.

I tried to explain the concept of the lost call to Twin A, but she had already lost interest in the book and was now trying to climb the bookshelf to reach a rogue Cheerio she had spotted on the middle shelf.

The great meat puree disaster of last winter

Thinking about turkeys inevitably dragged my mind back to the horrific trenches of early weaning. When the girls were around six months old, our GP—a woman who looks like she survives entirely on black coffee and exasperation—suggested we start introducing dark meat turkey into their diet. Apparently, the iron stores that babies are miraculously born with just sort of vanish at the six-month mark, leaving you with anaemic little gremlins unless you intervene. I picture this iron just quietly draining out of their ears while they sleep, though I suspect the medical science is slightly more nuanced.

Determined to be Father of the Year, I bypassed the perfectly adequate jars of baby food at Tesco and bought a massive, organic dark meat turkey joint. I roasted it for hours. And then came the pureeing. I don't know if you've ever taken beautifully roasted, fragrant dark meat and aggressively blitzed it in a food processor with a splash of breastmilk, but I can assure you that the resulting substance is an affront to God.

The machine screamed as it violently rendered the poultry into a grey, fibrous paste. The smell, which had previously been quite appetising, suddenly morphed into something resembling the back alley behind a premium cat food factory. It was thick, it was grainy, and it possessed a beige, spackle-like quality that suggested it could be used to fill cracks in our plasterwork. I ladled this grim slurry into two silicone bowls and presented it to the twins, who looked at me as if I had just offered them a plate of warm gravel.

Twin B dipped one tentative finger into the turkey paste, examined it with deep suspicion, and then slowly, deliberately wiped it directly into her left eye. Twin A simply inhaled sharply and began to scream, evidently offended by the very concept of poultry. I spent the next forty-five minutes trying to coax a single spoonful into their mouths, watching them deploy their tongue-thrust reflex to violently eject the meat back onto their chins, creating a sort of textured, beige beard on both of them.

The internet advised me that the turkey needed to be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees, which sounds like American nonsense for "dangerously hot," so I just baked it until it looked thoroughly grey and lifeless before the blending phase anyway.

At the time of the puree incident, they were wearing their Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuits, which is a detail burned into my memory because of the ensuing laundry catastrophe. Now, these are genuinely nice bodysuits—they've this brilliant envelope-shoulder design that lets you peel them downwards over the body during a spectacular nappy explosion, rather than dragging the mess over the baby's head. The organic cotton is incredibly soft, and they stretch beautifully to accommodate a chunky six-month-old. However, I'm legally obligated to inform you that pureed dark meat turkey possesses staining properties rivalling permanent marker. The lovely, earthy neutral tone of the cotton absorbed the poultry grease with terrifying efficiency, leaving a permanent, murky brown shadow around the collar that survived three separate boils in the washing machine. They're lovely bodysuits, but perhaps strip your child down to a nappy before introducing them to blended bird.

My brief delusion of agricultural grandeur

After the great turkey puree rejection, I needed a minute to compose myself. I laid the twins on their backs beneath the Wooden Rainbow Play Gym in our living room. I've a deep appreciation for this specific piece of equipment, mostly because it doesn't require batteries, doesn't flash blinding LED lights, and doesn't play a tinny, synthesised version of "Old MacDonald" that drills into your skull. It’s just nice, quiet wood and fabric. The girls would lie there for a solid twenty minutes, happily batting at the little hanging elephant and the wooden rings, completely mesmerised by the basic physics of swinging objects.

While they were distracted by the wooden elephant, I sat on the rug with my phone and somehow spiralled from "how to get turkey stains out of cotton" to "how hard is it to raise turkeys." This is the danger of the stay-at-home dad brain; you spend so much time talking to people who can't use consonants that you start entertaining absurd, hyper-masculine fantasies, like raising heritage poultry on a damp balcony in London.

Let me tell you, homesteaders are built different, because raising poults sounds like an absolute nightmare of anxiety and impending death. I read a thread by a woman in Ohio that thoroughly crushed my balcony-farming dreams. Poults, it seems, are practically suicidal. For the first week of their lives, they require a brooder temperature of roughly 95 degrees, meaning you're essentially baking them. If they get slightly chilly, they just give up and perish.

Worse still, you apparently can't give a baby turkey cold water. If they drink water that's too cold, their core temperature plummets, and they develop something farmers colloquially call "short neck syndrome," where they just droop their little heads and die of hypothermia right there next to the water dish. To prevent this, you've to serve them lukewarm water in a shallow dish filled with shiny marbles so they don't accidentally drown themselves while investigating their own reflection.

Oh, and whatever you do, you can't keep them anywhere near chickens, because chickens are asymptomatic carriers of a plague called blackhead disease that will instantly obliterate a turkey.

By the time I finished reading this, I was sweating. I looked at my twins, who were currently trying to eat the leg of the wooden play gym, and realised I was barely qualified to keep human infants alive, let alone fragile birds that die if their drinking water lacks the ambient temperature of a warm bath.

If you also want to abandon your farming fantasies and just buy nice things that keep your children occupied while you scroll Wikipedia, you might want to browse some of our wooden toys and play gyms.

Accepting defeat and serving toast

Back in the present, at 5:35 AM, Twin A was still standing by the bookshelf, clutching the farm book and waiting for me to validate her.

"It's called a poult," I told her, my voice gravelly with sleep. "The baby turkey. It's a poult."

She stared at me for a long, unblinking moment, her face a mask of toddler contempt.

"No," she said firmly. "Chicken."

She dropped the book on my face and wandered off towards the kitchen to demand toast. I lay there, accepting that I had acquired a wealth of useless poultry knowledge that my daughter had instantly rejected, much like the pureed meat of last winter. But at least the sun was finally coming up, and soon it would be an acceptable hour to turn on the coffee machine.

Before you completely lose your mind trying to figure out weaning, teething, or toddler trivia hour, take a moment to look at gear that really works. Explore our collection of soothing essentials to find the one thing that might honestly buy you five minutes of peace today.

Questions I've asked myself at 3 AM

What's a baby turkey seriously called?
If you want to be technically correct and highly pedantic, it's a poult. If you want to appease a two-year-old at dawn, it's whatever she tells you it's. Usually "chicken" or "birdie". Don't try to correct them; it only prolongs the conversation.

When can my baby safely eat turkey?
Our health visitor insisted on the six-month mark, right when we started weaning. Apparently, that's when their iron levels start dropping off a cliff. You want the dark meat because it's richer in iron and zinc, though I warn you, the visual reality of pureed dark meat is going to test your stomach.

How do I puree turkey without it looking like dog food?
You don't. Accept the beige paste. The trick is allegedly adding breastmilk, formula, or a very low-sodium broth to thin it out so they don't choke, but nothing on earth will make it look appetising. Just spoon it in quickly and avoid making eye contact with the bowl.

Is it true that turkeys are incredibly hard to raise?
Based on my frantic 4 AM forum reading, yes. They're fragile, cold-blooded little things that need 95-degree heat, lukewarm water, and constant supervision so they don't accidentally drown in their own water bowls. Stick to raising human babies; they're slightly more durable and don't require shiny marbles in their cups.

Why do I need to avoid salt when making turkey for babies?
Because their tiny kidneys are basically decorative at this stage and can't handle processing sodium. So while a beautifully brined, salted, and honey-glazed holiday bird tastes magnificent to us, feeding it to an infant is a terrible idea. You have to roast their portion completely plain, which only adds to the bleakness of the resulting puree.