48 NATURE AND IT& 



Don't bother or scare them in any way. When you feed the 

 old stock do so near their sheds at night. When they are 

 laying 1 don't go near their nests and let them hatch their 

 own young. When the poults are hatched don't handle 

 them at all. 



They positively cannot bear handling, and the old hen 

 can do more for the poults than the best poultryman on 

 earth. She will see that they do not get wet or overfed and 

 if you keep away she will raise all of them. I have done 

 this for eight years. I tried every way to raise them at 

 home, but one hen in the wild state could raise more than I 

 could with half a dozen hens, with day and night care. 



About once a day I go out and feed them milk curd and 

 black pepper and onions cut up fine. Pepper and onions are 

 life savers for turkeys. They live on grasshoppers, bugs 

 and the hen herself will not go hungry. But just as soon as 

 you feed corn and grain to turkeys they get too fat and get 

 indigestion and yellow droppings, loose and sulphur looking 

 stuff. This is not cholera but indigestion, too much grain, 

 and if you feed the young and catch them every day or drive 

 them in when a storm comes up they will get sick in spite of 

 you. They are very timid and it worries them to death to 

 be chased or driven. The lice will not bother them if you 

 let them go wild and help themselves. If you want to you 

 can use gasoline on both the old and the young turkeys, if 

 you are sure they have lice. Spray it on them and it will 

 not do them the least harm. Provide a dust box for them of 

 wood ashes and sulphur mixed, and have the box covered so 

 that the rain will not wet the dust. A shed for this would 

 be a good thing, so arranged that the sun could shine in the 

 box and yet keep the rain off. Make the roof about three 

 feet above the box, and about twice the size of the box. 



In the fall about November 1st pull out or cut their 

 wing feathers. Drive the turkeys in a shed or yard and 

 feed them on boiled corn and beans for ten days and then 

 get them in the market five or six days before Thanksgiving 

 Day. The Mammoth Bronze turkeys ought to weigh fifteen 

 to twenty pounds each, and this at nine to ten cents per 



