No. 5. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 221 



causes, soft-shelled eggs, weak poults, liver diseases and death. A 

 good grain ration for winter is equal parts red wheat, oats, and 

 corn in litter, supplemented with a moist, crumbly mash of two parts 

 bran and one each of wheat mids, and ground oats, wet with sweet 

 or sour milk. Steamed cut clover, or alfalfa, sprouted oats, waste 

 apples, raw potatoes, beets and turnips should be fed. 



Let it be remembered that turkeys on range do not germandize and 

 work for every bite they get ; therefore have a scratch shed for them, 

 where they may exercise for their feed and may be housed in extreme 

 weather. Furnish charcoal and grit and feed, just enough to keep 

 them in good condition, and no more. 



TURKEY POULTS— THEIR HATCHING, BROODING AND FEEDING 



To raise young turkeys to a splendid maturity for market and 

 for breeding, one must follow Nature. When Mother Wild Turkey 

 goes to nesting, she is seldom found by furry or feathered foes. She 

 steals away from her gobbler also, as he has a growing appetite for 

 turkey eggs and young turkey on the half-shell. She creeps under 

 the low pines and fragrant vines and ferns and fallen tree-tops, and 

 there lays her creamy, speckled eggs in the black, damp forest mould, 

 and covers them with her soft feathers and wide wings and warm 

 breast, and sits in shaded silence and dreams of the downy bird 

 babies to come. It is a clean, cool, pure, beautiful nest, and the 

 natural moisture from the sweet, rich earth, aids the perfect incuba- 

 tion of her eggs. 



The Creator did not intend the turkey to brood in a band-box. But 

 the nature-faker got busy. Some one's great, great grandmother, 

 think to improve on nature, rolled a barrel out of the cellar, and 

 placing dry straw therein, set tame Mother Turkey thereon. (See 

 Fig. 6). What a difference between this and the forest nests. What 

 a trial to sit in a hot, dry barrel for a month, especially when the 

 barrel gets bughouse, as such often do. 



The nature-faker now went a step further toward the turkey grave- 

 yard by giving the turkey eggs to the lousy, scabby-legged cluck to 

 hatch, and made her step-mother to tender little turkey poults. This 

 was simply over working Nature — a greedy trick to get more turkey 

 eggs, for Mother Turkey generally lays more eggs when her nest 

 is robbed. But such egg-machine tactics spell failure. The more 

 eggs, the smaller; the w^eaker their internal structure; the less fer- 

 tile and the less livable poults. 



Our picture (figure 7) shows the natural turkey oviduct, which 

 produces but twelve to twenty eggs per season, the mother generally 

 hatching and raising but one brood. The nature-faker gives the first 

 clutch of eggs to the cluck, and then after the turkey is weary of 

 laying, condescends to give the natural mother the eggs that have the 

 least chance. Thus he spreads his turkey hatching over the whole 

 summer when lice are thickest, heat kills and stunts, and good turkey 

 starting food is dried up. 



But the first clutch of eggs gives best poults; spring is God's 

 natural time for turkey poults to kick the shell, for then nature is 

 most prodigal with turkey-poult provender, the youngsters revel in 

 it, and get a fine start before heat scorches turkey vegetation and 

 kills off the best bugs and Avigglers. Besides it must be remembered 



