Breeding and Rearing Turkeys. 517 



meal. Do not fail to give fresh cool water two or three times a day, and milk is good for an 

 occasional drink. 



" When the young are about three weeks old, the old bird may be let out with them every 

 morning after the dew is off the grass, and shut up every evening. They should then have food 

 placed under a frame with slats, so as to keep the old birds from it. When the young get so that 

 they can fly up to roost, their quarters should be changed to the turkey-house. This house can be 

 built to suit the taste of the owner, but a rough board shed, made secure against dogs, foxes, &c., is 

 sufficient. It should be provided with broad perches of easy access from the ground, so as to avoid 

 crooked breasts and other injuries. The old and young should be confined in this house every 

 evening, and well fed night and morning with a variety of food ; during the day they will roam 

 over the farm, and devour quantities of grasshoppers and other insects. 



" The Turkey does not attain his full weight until his third year. I never weighed a brood of 

 turkeys but once, and that was in February, 1871. They were then just eight months old. Eight 

 gobblers weighed from twenty-three and a half pounds to twenty-nine and a half pounds each, and 

 the eight averaged twenty-five and a half pounds ; six hens from thirteen and a half pounds to 

 fifteen pounds each, averaging a little over fourteen pounds. These were remarkably good chicks 

 for their age. They were raised from a fourteen-and-a-half-pound hen and a thirty-two-pound 

 gobbler. Strange as it may appear, it is a fact that I have always succeeded in raising better 

 chicks from hens of fourteen to fifteen pounds than those of heavier weight ; but a fine large 

 gobbler is of the greatest importance. As above stated, however, he should have his weight 

 reduced, for the sake of the hens, before breeding." 



The description of the Bronze Turkey in detail will be found in the schedule, which we copy 

 from the American " Standard of Excellence," at the end of this chapter, and from which it will 

 be seen how closely it resembles the wild breed. Mr. Lythall has crossed the Bronze with the 

 Cambridge, putting the cock sent to Birmingham in 1870 by Mr. Simpson to his own hens, and 

 showing, in 1871, a young turkey-cock, the produce of the cross, which weighed twenty-eight 

 pounds at six months old, and took first prize in the young class. 



Mr. Simpson's notes contain all the essentials of good turkey management ; but some further 

 remarks appear advisable, and the more so as there has been on some points a difference of 

 opinion. Thus, we have seen it stated that Mr. Lythall prefers to breed from gobblers not 

 exceeding two years old, and his example has been quoted as if conclusive in favour of this course. 

 It will have been noticed, however, that the cockerel above mentioned, and which is certainly the 

 heaviest yet bred in England, was bred from Mr. Simpson's old bird ; and as the Americans have 

 hitherto beaten us in weights, this agreement with their theory is pretty nearly conclusive, besides 

 being borne out by the almost unanimous opinion of English breeders. The great objection to 

 using old gobblers lies in their weight ; but a way to remedy this has already been pointed out, 

 and removes the difficulty entirely. Mr. William W. Clift, another celebrated American turkey 

 breeder, and formerly editor of the American Agriculturist, in an article upon breeding turkeys, in 

 the American Poultry World, is equally " strong" upon the necessity of using fine matured males. 

 " In rearing this or any other variety," he says, " almost everything depends upon the parent 

 birds ; yet in nothing are farmers more careless. The common practice is to sell off the heaviest 

 birds at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and take the late birds of light weight for breeding. The 

 excuse for this is that the heavy cocks wear the feathers from the hen's back, and the heavy hens 

 are more apt to break the eggs in the nest. Both these notions are old wives' fables, that ought to 

 be banished from the poultry-yard. Another objectionable practice is to breed only from yearling 

 hens. The old birds are very generally sold off because they have four or five more pounds of 



