BEARING THE TURKEY CHICKS. 71 



viz : to develop the red carunculous formation about the 

 head and neck, so characteristic of the turkey. If the tur- 

 key chicks be late hatched or weakly, it is retarded some- 

 times another month. Should the growth, from what- 

 ever cause, be checked when young, they will never make 

 large and vigorous birds. After they have "thrown the 

 red, " the sexes can be distinguished, and they are then 

 termed poults. They should not be allowed to perch too 

 early, but bedded down upon chaff, leaves, etc., or they 

 will have crooked breasts. Later on, the fleshy appendage 

 over the beak, and the billy or horsehair-like tuft on the 

 breast, make their appearance in the male birds, which, 

 with tail erected and outspread, and with the whole body 

 inflated with pomp, can be easily distinguished from their 

 more somber sisters. At the time of "throwing the red," 

 the young turkeys pass through their chicken molt, 

 another critical period in their life. The birds lose their 

 appetite and languish several days. They require now 

 more stimulating food and a larger meat diet. Being 

 insectivorous, the best range young turkeys can have is 

 among shrubbery, bushes and such like. If the weather 

 be open and fine, and the birds have a little extra care 

 tor a short time, they become as hardy, as adults, as they 

 were delicate when young. 



In Kentucky, writes Mr Barber, the young should be 

 fed for the first week on corn bread in which there ia 

 plenty of egg, and stale light bread soaked in milk. With 

 the range of a blue-grass woodland, and plenty of insects, 

 the poults grow very rapidly ; when they are six to eight 

 weeks of age they are permitted to roost in trees. 



