THE MYSTERIES OF THE POULTRY YARD. 



373 



farmer's wives can resist sending their 18 or 20 lb. 

 " stag" • to market, while a young cock of the 

 year, they think, will answer every purpose next 

 spring as well. Some even deem it an extrava- 

 gance to keep a turkey-cock at all, if they have not 

 more than two hens, which they would send on a 

 visit^of a day or two to a neighbor who has a male 

 bird. The time when the hens require this change 

 of air in spring ma}' be known bj' their lying down 

 on the ground, as if they were unwell, doing so im- 

 mediately again, if taken up and made to walk on, 

 ■which apparent languor is accompanied by a lack- 

 a-daisical love-sick expression of countenance. 

 Last Christmas we ate or gave away all our tur- 

 keys (including a magnificent stag, whose image 

 haunts us still) except one hen. The above men- 

 tioned plan was necessarily adopted, and the re- 

 sult was from 1 1 eggs, 8 chicks so strong as almost 

 to rear themselves. 



When the hen has once selected a spot for her 

 nest, she will continue to lay there till the time of 

 incubation, so that the eggs may be brought home 

 from day to day, there being no need of a nest egg, 

 as with the common fowl. She will lay from 15 to 

 20 eggs, more or less. Her determination to sit 

 will be known by her constantly remaining on the 

 nest, though empt}'; and as it is seldom in a posi- 

 tion sufficiently secure against the weather or pil- 

 ferers, a nest should be prepared for her by placing 

 some straw, with her eggs, on the floor of a conve- 

 nient out-house. She should then be brought home 

 and gently and kindly placed upon it. It is a most 

 pleasing sight to witness the satisfaction with 

 which the bird takes to her long-lost eggs, turning 

 them about, placing them with her bill in the most 

 suitable positions, packing the straw tightly around 

 and under them, and finally sinking upon them with 

 the quiet joy of anticipated maternity. 



Thirteen eggs are enough to give her ; a large 

 hen might cover more ; but a few strong, well- 

 hatched chicks are better than a large brood of 

 weaklins'S; that have been delayed in the shell, per- 

 haps 12 hours over the time, from insufficient 

 warmth. At the end of a week it is usual to add 

 two or three fowl's eggs, '" to teach the young tur- 

 keys to peck." The plan is not a bad one ; the 

 activity of the chickens does stir up some emulation 

 in their larger brethren ; the eggs take but little 

 room in the nest ; and at the end of the summer 

 you have two or three very fine fowls, all the 

 plumper for the extra diet they have shared with 

 the little turkeys. 



Some ladies believe it necessary to turn the eggs 

 once a day; but the hen does that herself many 

 times a day. If the eggs are marked and you no- 

 tice their position when she leaves the nest, you 

 will never find them arranged in the same order. 

 A person who obtained 99 chicks from 100 eggs, 

 took the great trouble to turn every e^g every day 

 with her own hand, during the whole time of incu- 

 bation. The result ap;?ears favorable ; but, in fact, 

 only amounts to this, that such officiousness did no 

 harm with such a good, patient, quiet creature as 

 the sitting turkey is, but it would probably have 

 worried and annoyed any other bird into addling 



• In Norfolk, turkey-cocks are called slags from their se- 

 cond year upwards. 



her whole clutch. We will at once reject, as ut- 

 terly absurd and unnatural, all directions to im- 

 merse or " try" the eggs in a pail of water, hot or 

 cold. 



In four weeks the little birds will be hatched ; 

 and then, how are they to be reared ? Some books 

 tell you to plunge them in cold water, to strengthen 

 them : those that survive will certainly be hardy 

 birds.* Others say, " make them swallow a whole 

 pepper-corn;" which is as if we were to cram a 

 London Pippin down the throat of a new-born 

 babe. Others, again, say, " give them a little ale. 

 beer or wine." We know unhappily that some mo- 

 thers are wicked enough to give their infants gin, 

 and we know the conseipiences. 



Give them nothing ; do nothing to them ; let 

 them be in the nest under the shelter of their mo- 

 ther's wings, at least eight or ten hours ; if hatched 

 in the afternoon till the following morning. Then 

 place her on the grass, in the sun, under a roomy 

 coop. If the weather be fine she may be stationed 

 where you choose by a long piece of flannel list tied 

 round one leg, and fastened to a stump or a stone. 

 But the boarded coop saves her ever- watchful anx- 

 iety from the dread of enemies above and behind — 

 the carrion-crow, the hawk, the rat, the weasel ; 

 and also protects herself — she will protect her 

 young — from the sudden showers of summer. OiTer 

 at first a few crumbs of bread ; the little ones, for 

 some hours, will be in no hurry to eat; but when 

 they do begin, supply them constantly and abun- 

 dantly with chopped egg, shreds of meat and fat, 

 curd, boiled rice mixed vt'ith cress, lettuce, and the 

 green of onions. Melted mutton suet poured over 

 barley-meal, and cut up when cold; also bullock's 

 liver boiled and minced, are excellent things. The 

 quantity consumed costs nothing ; the attention to 

 supply it is everything. 



The young of the turkey afford a remarkable in- 

 stance of hereditary and transmitted habits. From 

 having been tended for many generations with so 

 much care, they appear naturallv to expect it al- 

 most as soon as they are released from the shell. 

 We are told that young pointers, the descendants 

 of well-educated dogs, will point at the scent of 

 game without any previous training ; and so tur- 

 key chicks seem to wait for the attention of man 

 before they can have any experience of the value or 

 nature of those attentions. Food which they would 

 refuse from a platter, they will peck greedily from 



* Sir J. S. Sebright exposes the folly of endeavoring to 

 make young creatures robu>t by undue exposure to cold and 

 hardship, an experiment which some men and women are 

 cruel enougli to iry upon their own olTspring. Air and exer- 

 cise increase the strengih of any grownig animal, but cold 

 and hunger only dwarf ajid weaken. We see robust chil- 

 dren in extremely poor families, not because they are poor, 

 bui because if the)' were not robust, they would not be alive 

 at all. Sir John, in his •• Treatise on improving the Breeds of 

 Domestic Animals," pp.15, i(>, says, " In cold and barren 

 countries no animals can live to ihe age of maturity but those 

 that have strong constitutions; the weak and the unhealthy do 

 not live to propagate their infirmities, as is too ofien the case 

 with our domestic animals. To this I attribute the peculiar 

 hardiness of the horses, cattle, and slieep, bred in mountain- 

 ous countries, more than to their having been inured to the 

 severity of the climate ; for our domestic animals do not be- 

 come more hardy by being exposed, wlien young to cold and 

 hunger; aniinal< so treated will not, wlien arrived at the age 

 of maturity, endure so much hardship as those who have 

 been better kept in their infant st;ite." 



