POULTRY FOR PROFIT 205 



bread. To a teaspoon of this mixture add a tea- 

 spoon of cottage cheese, a little black pepper and 

 a sprinkling of fine chick grit. After a day or two 

 I began adding a little steel-cut oats or cracked 

 wheat. I fed only a teaspoon of this at first to ten 

 turkeys and the hen, but the hen got very little for 

 the turkeys were so ravenous. Most breeders say 

 three times a day is often enough to feed, but my 

 poults were so very hungry I felt obliged to feed five 

 times a day, and the meal was soon increased to two 

 teaspoons. 



The hen is always a problem in feeding poults, for 

 she will not eat unless she can feed them, but I let 

 her manage the first week on what her starving 

 babies would let her have, and she did not suffer. 

 A good fat hen does not mind fasting while she is 

 caring for her brood. 



After ten days I reduced the number of meals to 

 three but gave a head of lettuce once a day between 

 meals. I gradually added more oats, either steel- 

 cut or rolled, leaving off the bread, but they had 

 the cottage cheese once a day until they were five 

 weeks old, and always, at least once a day, chopped 

 onion or onion tops. Onion seems to be the one thing 

 which is absolutely necessary to a young turkey's 

 welfare, for its liver is its weak point and must al- 

 ways be considered. 



When they were two or three weeks old I began 

 adding a little whole wheat to the ration and I al- 

 ways put grit in the food at least once a day. As 

 they grew older and were able to pick up more of 

 their living I worked them onto a diet of chopped 

 onions with dry bran or shorts for breakfast, whole 

 wheat or wheat and rolled oats for supper and a 

 little green at noon. I think shorts is rather better 

 than bran, for bran is laxative. Occasionally I mixed 



