NATURAL LAWS. 11 



How Wild Turkeys and Prairie Chickens Raise Their Young and 

 How our Domestic Turkeys and Hens Raise Their Chicks 

 if They Have Their Own Way. 



I have watched wild turkeys and prairie chickens, etc., 

 for years, when I helped to trail a bunch of 4,000 head of 

 cattle from Texas to British Northwest Territory. I have 

 seen hundreds of wild turkeys in Indian Territory along the 

 Cinnamon river about the middle of May. We had a bunch- 

 ed lot of cattle; we could make but a few miles a day, as 

 they were cows, calves, steers, etc., and almost every day in 

 that month we had fifty to 100 calves born to care for. In 

 the evening- we would go gunning for turkeys. We would 

 watch where they would roost and on a moonlight night 

 would get the turkeys between us and the moon and then 

 shoot the gobler and the hens. The hens with young poults 

 would not roost on the trees, because the young could not 

 fly. These we could not see but would hear them flutter 

 away and hide under the grass, etc. We spent two weeks 

 in this turkey country and I noticed dozens and dozens of 

 young turkeys. It was a very cold and damp spring, and to 

 see fifteen to eighteen young poults was nothing unusual. 

 These turkeys had their young out in all kinds of weather, 

 and wet grass when we would see them. They were all 

 ages, some looked to be twelve weeks old, others only a fe*r 

 weeks. Who drove those turkeys out of the rain and who- 

 fed and cared for them? 



Poultry breeders, note this, and you will all admit that 

 it is a fact. Breeders kill their Poultry and turkeys by over- 

 feeding them and not giving the right kind of feed. They 

 raise them on the prison or on the hot-house plan. In fact 

 they are prisoners. You will never raise a turkey nor a 

 goose unless you give them lots of range and let them pick 

 their own feed and roost. I have not tried this once, but 

 fifty times or more. 



A wild turkey hides her nsst, lays fifteen to twenty eggs 

 and when these young are a few days old she takes them 

 out for food, foot by foot. No one ever chases them, no one 



