60 TURKEY CULTUKE. 



more, as wanted, and give them a trial ; those which do 

 not give entire satisfaction can be fattened and sent to 

 market ; they will pay for the remainder. 



" Above all others, may it be animated or artificial 

 brooders, turkeys are the first ; to breed with them is not 

 so expensive as using incubators or foster mothers, and 

 gives much less trouble. Some of my readers will jump 

 from their chair at reading this ; I beg them to sit down 

 again, and listen quietly to me. In the country, a flock 

 of turkeys, be it very large, costs nothing to keep. Mine are 

 turned out on a lawn, partly planted with wood, and they 

 never get a handful of corn or any meal, until severe win- 

 ter sets in that is, when the snow covers the ground. 

 All are in splendid condition. At night, they come home, 

 their crops always full, and are shut up in a stable, where 

 they find their ideal perch an old wheel, fixed on a 

 stake a few feet from the ground. In our climate, the 

 winters are not long, and rarely very severe. We may 

 calculate to have to feed our turkeys during two months 

 The manure, which they produce in great quantities the 

 whole year round, pays amply for the expense of food dur- 

 ing that period, which is also the time we require their 

 services for brooding. Thus the cost of feeding ought 

 not to be taken into account; nevertheless, if we do, the 

 food of four turkeys, which will breed one hundred eggs, 

 will not come to the cost of the heating of an incubator 

 of same capacity. Such a machine will consume, per day, 

 about one litre of petroleum of first quality, at the rate of 

 five pence the litre. Four turkeys will not eat more than 

 threepence worth. As for the trouble, I do not think it 

 makes more labor to take the hens from the nests once a 

 day than to turn, morning and evening, a quantity of eggs, 

 clean the lamp, fill up the water, etc., without counting 

 that the slightest neglect may expose the whole contents 

 of the incubator. With turkeys, nothing like this is to be 

 dreaded. Of mild and submissive disposition, they can 



