16 



TURKEYS— THEIR CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 



top, over which the cloth partition 



hangs, and the lath at bottom 



to which It Is tacked. 



through to keep the ground dry.and not enough to hurt the 

 tenderest poult. The next thing is to feed them. For the 

 first day or two I give them nothing but light bread soaked 

 in new milk and pressed as dry as possible, with plenty of 

 black pepper sprinkled over it. After that I feed them 

 almost entirely on egg corn bread soaked in sweet milk, in 

 which is mixed raw egg. Right here I want to say, there is 

 nothing better for young turkeys than raw eggs. I learned 

 several years ago that they are far superior to boiled eggs. I 

 know that curd or clabber cheese is highly recommended by 

 a great many persons, but I have found it a very injurious 

 food for poults. I have believed this for several years, but 



nevertheless, 1 com- 

 menced to feed spar- 

 ingly last spring.and 

 in less than two 

 weeks I tost five or 

 six poults, and in 

 every case but one I 

 found the curd pack- 

 ed in the entrails. 

 The other case was 

 enlargement of the 

 gall bladdelr, caused 

 from indigestion. 



Before putting the 



hen and her brood in 



Fig. I— Coop for two turkeys, showing lath at tlle COOPi I cover the 



bottom with hay 

 or straw, otherwise 

 there is danger of 

 the hen injuring herself from slipping on the boards. I once 

 had a valuable turkey almost ruin herself in this way. The 

 young ones, however, get injured much more easily on the 

 straw. I keep the mother and turks in the coop for a day or 

 two, unless the weather is very mild, and then I stake them 

 out in an open place in front of the coops. This is done by 

 tying a stout twine, such as fleece or wool is tied with at 

 shearing time, to a short stake and driving the stake even 

 with the top of the ground. I measure the twine so that it 

 will not be long enough to wrap around any tree or shrub, 

 but near enough to the coop so that she can go in, but not 

 around it. The string I tie on the leg, just above the foot. 

 The hen will work and pull at the string for awhile, but she 

 soon becomes accustomed to it, and when I take her out to 

 tie her each morning she seems perfectly satisfied. This 

 way has a great many advantages to me over the old way of 

 putting them in a pen in the orchard. In the first place, the 

 hen cannot kill the poults by jumping in and out. Secondly, 

 they are right in sight, where I can give them my personal 

 attention at all times. Third, if a rain comes up, I run out, 

 untie the hen and put her inside the coop. The young ones 

 rush up for the food I give them and I put as many in with 

 each hen as I think she ought to have, because you see I have 

 several of these families in the yard and one mother is the 

 same as another to them. By the time the rain comes, the 

 hens with their broods are all safely housed, for it only 

 takes a few minutes to attend to all of them. Fourth, by the 

 time I give them their liberty, which is not till the poults are 

 three or four weeks old, they have become accustomed to 

 their roosting place, and the flocks are usually running to- 

 gether. The hens never separate, but all come in at night, 

 bringing the whole drove with them. It is very seldom that 

 they fail to come up, but if they do, I go after them and 

 drive them up, because if they form the habit of staying out, 

 it is almost impossible to break them. 



When they outgrow their coops and show signs of want- 

 ing to fly up to roost, I drive them into the turkey house. 



which is well ventilated, where I have roosts made about two 

 feet from the ground. I do this for fear of sudden rains in 

 the night, for I am not strong enough to get up and carry 

 turkeys in out of the wet. I used to do such things in the 

 past when my coops were kept under a shady tree in the 

 orchard, but I realized that it was only a question of time 

 when I should 'be compelled to give up the business entirely, 

 or keep the turkeys where they could have my personal at- 

 tention at all times. 



When they are a few weeks old. I feed them any small 

 grain that I have, but the principal food is corn chops damp- 

 ened just sufficient to cause the fine part to adhere to the 

 coarse. As they get older and until they are sold, they are 

 fed almost entirely on corn. They must be well supplied 

 with grit and oyster shells. When I first commenced to 

 raise turkeys in such close quarters, I was told by all my 

 neighbors that I would stunt them so that they would never 

 recover from it, but as I raise the heaviest turkeys that have 

 ever been raised in this part of the country, my friends have 

 quit talking. 



I have been asked what preparation I give my turkeys 

 for the show room, and my answer is, none whatever. From 

 the time they are four or five weeks old until they are 

 shipped to customers, they have the range of a one-hundred- 

 and-sixty-acre farm, and as soon as they are old enough to 

 withstand the hard rains at night, they are made to roost 

 outside in the open air. If during the winter we have deep 

 snows, and protracted cold spells, we drive them into the 

 barn and allow them to roost there until the weather mod- 

 erates. Managed this way, there is no danger of them con- 

 tracting colds and roup when being shipped a long distance. 



SHIPPING CRATE FOR TURKEYS. 



Seeing the forlorn and bedraggled condition of turkeys 

 shipped in pairs and trios to our station, made me wonder if 

 the turkeys I shipped to customers looked the same when 

 they arrived at their destination, and I determined to devise 

 some means of preventing them from picking each other and 

 breaking their feathers while on the journey. The crate I 

 use is my own invention, as I have never seen one anything 

 like it, and while it is a very simple affair, it answers the 

 purpose admirably. I use narrow cloth-lined crates for 

 shipping turkeys, making the crate for a pair just a little 

 wider than for a single bird, and for a trio a little wider than 

 for a pair. Any style of crate will do, but the ends should 

 be upright pieces so as to have something to nail partitions 

 to. In making a coop for a pair, after the frame is made 



nail on two laths lengthwise of the 



and before it is lined 

 crate, one the width 

 of a lath below the 

 top, the othe; 

 against the bottom. 

 Nail them firmly to 

 the upright piece at 

 either end. These 

 laths are just slant- 

 ing enough to show 

 the space at one end 

 to be about twice the 

 width of the other. 

 When you have the Fig. 2— Showing coop for trio, with cloth 

 laths firmly in place, partitions In place. 



take a piece of your lining twice the depth of the crate, 

 drop it over the top lath, tacking it firmly to the floor on 

 each side of the bottom lath. Now you have a good, firm 

 partition, one that will sway gently with the motion of the 

 birds, but keep them apart as effectually as a stone wall. 

 If you wish to ship a male and female, have the space on 

 one side of the partition a little wider than the other side, 



