POULTR?-CRAFT. 223 
universal. Many growers provide suitable buildings for both old and young 
turkeys; ~ome turn them out in summer, and house in winter; some, while 
leaving the turkeys free to roost outdoors, provide, near the usual roosting 
places, sheltered perches to which the fowl. may go in severe weather. Thi- 
latter method is unsati-tactory, —is in fact quite useless, (except as a sop tu 
the conscience of the keeper), because it is only when a storm is uncommonly 
rough at roosting time that turkeys will desert their usual perches for shelter. 
Some will not do it voluntarily under any circumstances. 
Turkeys certainly need shelter sometimes. (This most of the advocates of 
the open air method admit). To suppose that they do not, is to assume that 
the laws of nutrition are reversed when applied to turkeys —in bad weather. 
Young turkeys in preparation for market, exposed to the cold storms of fall 
and early winter, caznot make the weights they would if protected; —it is 
not possible. If breeding stock subjected to the rigors of a northern winter, 
attains the development or keeps the condition it would if sheltered — which 
is, to say the least, very doubtful—it is at increased cost for maintenance. 
Now it is a principle — and a fundamental one —of profitable poultry culture, 
that the poultryman ought always to be prepared for those contingencies, 
which, though the exact time of their occurrence is uncertain, he knows are 
sure to happen. In the matter of shelter, for instance, the wise poultryman 
provides such accommodations, and so habituates his fowls to use them, that 
when the weather is worst the fowls can be kept comfortable, and that with- 
out the keeper being obliged to do extra work under disagreeable conditions. 
And it is surely no more than common prudence for a turkey grower who 
wants to make the most of his opportunities, to provide suitable quarters and 
train the birds to roost under cover, at least through that portion of the year 
when cold rough weather prevails. 
Turkeys do not need as warm houses as chickens. Wherever the winter is 
not severe, a shed with front of slats or strong wire netting is sufficient. Even 
that the trend of progress and of some of the best teachings on turkey topics is toward 
the best methods of the chicken keepers. That the precise methods used for chickens 
will ever be applied to turkeys, does not appear at all probabie; but in whatever respects 
popular methods of handling turkeys are not truly economical and humane to the fowls 
and to the keeper, the changes already made by a few growers are sure to be more widely 
adopted. Much of the close adherence to old methods has been due to the prevalent belief 
that as turkeys are not ascompletely domesticated as other fowls, they cannot thrive unless 
allowed to continue many of the habits of their wild ancestors. Treatment of them has 
proceeded on the assumption that they are essentially different, 77 nature, from other 
domestic fowls. This assumption is correct in so far as it asserts that turkeys generally 
now have certain habits, different from those of thoroughly domesticated fowls, which 
habits render them less amenable to methods which suit the keeper; but it is wrong in 
that it presumes that these habits cannot be modified. The turkey is undoubtedly capa- 
ble of becoming as completely domesticated as the hen (chicken ), and it is highly proba- 
ble that such modification of habits would be followed by increased prolificacy —a most 
desirable improvement. 
