112 California Poultry Practice 



The second day commence giving a moist mash as follows: barley 

 meal, wheat middlings and bran, equal parts; add a little salt, just to 

 flavor it and only feed what the turkeys will eat up readily. At noon, 

 change ground barley for ground oats and feed as before. For the 

 evening meal, cracked corn, all they will eat. By changing the ground 

 feed every meal you not only give the turks a variety of food that is 

 more appetizing than all one thing, but you are improving the juici- 

 ness and quality in general of the meat. After about a week of this 

 diet, they will get tired of it in spite of the change. Then boil up a 

 big kettle of small potatoes, put in a handful of salt while cooking 

 and any fat or grease of any kind that is on the premises; when the 

 potatoes are soft, take a masher and mix in ground barley as you mash 

 the potatoes. If cracklings can be obtained, boil a good lump, say 

 ten or fifteen pounds in the potatoes and mix all together with the 

 barley or ground oats, but not middlings. The latter is too sticky to 

 use in boiling water. This can be fed to the turkeys as long as it 

 lasts, and they very rarely get tired of boiled potatoes. In fact, if 

 potatoes are plentiful on the farm, the whole course of fattening may 

 be with this boiled mash, using barley and oats as the ground feed in 

 turn. Any kind of vegetables that happen to be plentiful may be 

 used, but nothing is quite as good a flesh former as potatoes. The 

 corn lasts longer and that is why it is fed at night so that the system 

 is absorbing some food all the tirne. If the feed is all mixed cold it 

 is better if it can be mixed a part of the time with sour milk. 



We know many turkeys are fed on a corn diet solely, and they 

 are fat, too, but an all corn diet while it fattens, it does not give the 

 meat any flavor and the breast meat is always dry. The ground oats 

 and barley make juicy meat as well as fat meat. Feed all the green 

 feed the turkeys will eat, at least once a day, and twice is better. If 

 there are no cracklings to be had, either beef scrap or tallow must 

 be used the last two weeks of fattening. Unless milk is plentiful, in 

 which case the meat can be omitted, but tallow during the last week, 

 at the rate of a tablespoonful to each turkey once a day should be 

 given. A great deal depends on the grease, though it matters very 

 little what kind it is so that it is wholesome. Turkeys fed on this 

 plan will always insure a high price, and most farms have small pota- 

 toes that are fit for nothing but feeding. 



In shipping to market, always put birds of one size in a coop, as 

 near as possible, it often gets you a better price, besides it is direct 

 information to the commission man that you are not a novice in the 

 shipping business, and he pays more attention to the shipment. Put 

 the address of the party the shipment is made to in plain view, also 

 a return address of your own, so that your coop will come back. 

 This is part of the deal and all shippers should insist on their crates 

 being returned. The farmer needs to be business-like in his dealings 

 with others, and demand his rights. 



