POULTRIY-CRAFT. 221 
CHAPTER XVI. 
Turkeys. 
327. The Turkey — the Farmers’ Fowl. — The turkey is peculiarly a 
fowl for the general farm. Market conditions and the characteristics of the 
fowl combine to confine profitable turkey growing on a business scale to 
farms where the birds can have an extensive foraging ground. Turkeys can 
be, and are, grown on small places, but in very limited numbers. The 
turkeys produced elsewhere than on large farms hardly affect the trade either 
in market or breeding stock. 
The heaviest demand and best prices for turkeys come seasonably for the 
farm poultry keeper. The poults can be hatched at the ‘‘ natural” season, 
and grown to a salable maturity in time to get the best prices of the year. 
This feature of turkey growing is one of its strongest recommendations to 
farmers’ wives and daughters, who are usually the poultry keepers. Though 
it is open to question whether there is really as much to be made from turkeys 
as from chickens on the farm, it seems plain that the women on farms 
usually think turkey growing more profitable than any other branch of 
poultry culture, and it is probably true that the income from turkeys comes 
easier than that from chickens. There is greater satisfaction in producing 
something that is marketable when the market is at its best, and will bring in 
a large lump sum, as a flock of turkeys will. Then the receipts from the 
turkeys are a distinct addition to receipts from other poultry products. Tur- 
key growing need not interfere with or curtail operations with poultry. 
Turkeys forage further than chickens, and thus the two kinds of fowl are 
kept on the same farm with little interference, the turkeys ranging mostly 
over an area outside of that used by the hens. In growing turkeys, as in 
growing chickens on the farm, the flock can be of a size proportionate to the 
foraging ground, and the turkeys may be, after the first few weeks, reared — 
and sometimes fattened for market—on what they pick for themselves. 
Even when they require regular feeding and heavy feeding to fatten, there is 
at least as much profit in feeding grain to them as to any stock produced on 
the farm. The production of exhibition and fine breeding stock is also limited 
mostly to farmers who are fanciers, and to some special poultry breeders occu- 
pying large farms. The few prominent turkey breeders located on quite small 
farms farm out most of their stock. 
