BROODING AND REARING YOUNG STOCK 



While chicken hens are sometimes used as mothers for 

 the young turkeys, and while a few persons have used 

 artificial methods of brooding with some success, the tur- 

 key hen is undoubtedly the best mother that can be pro- 

 vided for the young poults. She not only seems to be able 

 to make them understand what she wants them to do but 

 she is very careful in guarding them from any danger and, 

 moreover, while she is ranging she keeps her brood to- 

 gether, not allowing them to become widely separated so 

 that any of them are not likely to become lost. She is 

 especially apt also in teaching them to hunt the kind of 

 food such as grasshoppers and other insects which are 

 especially well suited for their growth and development. 

 Chicken hens are often valuable mothers of the earliest 

 turkeys as they can be confined with their broods to better 

 advantage during the cold, bad, wet weather so likely to 

 be encountered at that time. 



It is often desirable in setting turkey eggs to give a sit- 

 ting to a turkey hen and to a chicken hen at the same time 

 so that they will hatch out together and all of the poults 

 can be given to the turkey hen since she makes a better 

 mother. It is best, however, not to give the turkey hen 

 more than 20 poults as she will raise a considerably larger 

 proportion of this number than if given 30 or 35. 



The principal objections to the chicken hen as a mother 

 for turkeys are that she stays too close about the farm 

 buildings, that she weans the young turkeys too early and 

 that she is more likely to give them lice. Turkeys do best 

 when they do not stay too closely about the farmyard and 



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