It's partly my fault for thinking that befriending them was a good idea. I do enjoy seeing the turkeys, just not when they do that! Betty Corning is tall thank goodness, but the bottom 3 feet gets stripped. It hurts even more when they get to the more delicate, large flowered ones. Now it's that time of year again, and I find myself chasing them away and attempting to erect barriers. They act like it's a delicacy, so I can't imagine any turkey not going for them once discovered. Maybe I need a dog..

rhizo_1- Makes sense to post in the wildlife forum... sorry about the categorization! I was so infuriated at the time I posted this that I had a hard time getting past using only very nasty words to describe the feathered terrorists; "pest" was the very nicest of them. I contacted my local Fish and Game office and left a message. Hopefully something can be done about the darn birds. Kimmsr- I never knew that! Thanks for the info. I guess I never thought of it, as birds (particularly my chickens) have their favorite foods, but you learn something every day. I guess the garlic slop I made yesterday and spread around won't do much. At least it's a conversation starter, as the smell of garlic is wafting around all the flower beds. The creepy garden tactics will have to wait for the deer to come down from the hills in a few months =) Thanks for the help!

Hey min, perhaps your dog would like to watch the turkey from OUTSIDE the window!!! Jan

ThunderBoltBee, They are amazing! Turkeys; they're not just a side dish for cornbread dressing and cranberry sauce! LOL I don't use any millet mixes in my bird feeders because I have to battle the non-native English House Sparrows (HoSP) tooth, beak, and nail. Millets attract them like magnets. I have a Purple Martin colony (April-August), nesting tree swallows, chickadees, nuthatches, nearby bluebirds, and various other cavity nesters that the HoSP love to kill. They will go box to box breaking eggs and killing chicks to clear "their" territory of other cavity nesters. I trap all them all breeding season and have managed to clear my native birds' immediate nesting territories of these pests. While the HoSP will eat black oil sunflower seed, if they're starved to it, it's not their favorite food so I offer only BOSS. All the native songbirds, and native cavity nesters (insectivores excluded) love it best. I use different types of feeders, making it easier for the native birds to pick the one they are most comfortable using, but all the feeders hold the same BOSS. I also offer suet blocks; I usually make my own. During the coldest part of the winter I offer shelled peanuts in a special feeder that only allows them to pull out one peanut at a time. That cuts down on waste, too. Of course, the doves (and turkeys) and other birds love to glean from the ground, too. And my turkey flock - they are real turkeys. I bought 50 lbs. of cracked corn last winter. They wouldn't touch it. I even did tests. A big pile of corn near a smaller pile of BOSS. The cleaned up the BOSS and turned their beaks up at the corn. Wes finally took it out to a field and dumped it for the deer. It was gone the next morning! From now until deep snow time the turkeys will have to glean under the feeders and be content with a quart or so of "extra" BOSS on the ground. Once they are in distress I'll start with the two-gallon bucket a day limit. One reason I think they are so spoiled is that I am surrounded by thousands of acres of sunflowers, wheat, soybeans, etc. There are corn fields, too, but they love to hang out in the other crops. I guess they think the corn is for the deer and raccoons!