136 Turkeys. 



rails, with the bars four inches apart ; it should be about 

 five feet long, four feet broad, and three feet high. 



Keep her cooped for two months, moving the coop every 

 fine, dry day into a grass field, but on cold or wet days 

 keep them in the outhouse. If she is allowed her liberty 

 before they are well grown and strong, she will wander 

 away with them through the long grass, hedges, and 

 ditches, OAjer highway, common, and meadow, mile after 

 mile, losing them on the road, and straying on with the 

 greatest complacency, and perfectly satisfied so long as she 

 has one or two following her, and never once turning her 

 head to see how her panting chicks are getting on, nor 

 troubled when they squat down tired out, and implore her 

 plaintively to come back ; and all this arises from sheer 

 heedlessness, and not from want of affection, for she will 

 fight for her brood as valiantly as any pheasant will for 

 hers. When full grown they should never be allowed to 

 roam with her while there is heavy dew or white frost on 

 the grass, but be kept in till the fields and hedgerows are 

 dry. They will pick up many seeds and insects while 

 wandering about in the fields with her, but must be fed by 

 hand three or four times a day at regular intervals. 



They cease to be chicks or chickens, and are called 

 turkey-poults when the male and female distinctive charac- 

 teristics are fairly established, the carunculated skin and 

 comb of the cock being developed, which is called " shoot- 

 ing the red," or " putting out the red," and begins when 

 they are eight or ten weeks old. It is the most critical 

 period of their lives much more so than moulting, and 

 during the process their food must be increased in quan- 

 tity, and made more nourishing by the addition of boiled 

 egg-yolks, bread crumbled in ale, wheaten flour, bruised 

 hempseed, and the like, and they must be well housed at 

 night. When this process is completed they will be hardy, 

 and able to take care of themselves ; but till they are fully 

 fledged it will be advisable to keep them from rain and 

 cold, and not to try their hardness too suddenly. 



Vegetables, as chopped nettles, turnip-tops, cabbage 

 sprouts, onions, docks, and the like, boiled down and well 



