IN NATURE'S WAY. 



Selecting Breeders— Introducing New Blood — Raising Breeders — Avoid Crossing, but Judiciously Inbreed — Poults 

 In Nature's Way — Range — rood — Housing — Difficult Sections to Breed Correctly. 



By B. F. Ulrey, Treasurer National Bronze Turkey Club. 



S I "BREED only the Bronze variety of turkeys, 

 and a limited number of them for exhibition 

 and breeding purposes, and as I have had no 

 experience with any other variety and never 

 sell on the market, except the culls of my 

 flock, I cannot give you much information on raising 

 turkeys for market. However, if I were to breed tur- 

 keys for market purposes, I should employ the same 

 methods as I do in breeding exhibition fowls, except that I 

 should not discard a good bird if it were faulty in color. 

 Most farmers, I notice, sell all of 

 the early hatched turkeys on the 

 market because they will bring 

 more money and they retain the 

 late hatched and immature poults 

 for breeding purposes. The conse- 

 quence is, they do not raise many 

 next season, because the breeding 

 stock has no vigor and the poults 

 no strength when hatched. 



I have bred Bronze turkeys for 

 ten years and my method of rais- 

 ing them is entirely different from 

 that employed by anyone with 

 whom I have talked, or from the 

 methods of poultry writers which 

 I find printed in the poultry jour- 

 nals from time to time. In the 

 first place, I keep about fifteen fe- 

 males in each flock, seven hens 

 and eight pullets, headed by an 

 adult torn, assisted by a cockerel, 

 and I always have fertile eggs. 

 The Bronze turkey commences 

 about ten months old and she 

 to twenty-five eggs before she 

 confined for about a week or 



Two Winning Hens, the Property of B. F. Ulrey 



Indiana Queen (at left) , score 97K; Pride of Shaw- 

 nee (at right) , weight at ten months 

 old, 23% pounds. 



to lay when she is 

 will lay from twenty 

 offers to set, then 1 if 

 ten days she will commence 

 to lay again and will lay from twelve to sixteen more eggs 

 before she becomes broody. Most hens lay two clutches in a 

 season, though I have known some hens to lay all summer, 

 and I have one hen that laid ninety-seven eggs from April 

 first to September tenth. In selecting my breeding stock I 

 take females as near standard weight and color as possible, 

 having large frames and bones and such as are not too fat. 

 These are mated with toms that are a little above standard 

 weight, the cockerel weighing from twenty-eight to thirty 

 pounds at ten months old, the yearling cocks from thirty- 

 five to thirty-seven pounds, the adult from thirty- 

 eight to forty-two pounds. I am particular to have males 

 of the best color and shape that I can get. I find that the 

 female gives us size, while the male governs the plumage. 

 In changing males and breeding for exhibition purposes, I 

 always try to get a torn that is extra fine in the sections in 

 which my females are defective. The best way to introduce 

 new blood is to purchase a female from some successful 

 breeder and mate her with the torn that heads your own 



flock. Save her eggs and mark her poults, and if they prove 

 good, you can use them successfully. On the other hand, 

 if you buy a torn of another strain (the male counts more 

 than half of the flock) to mate with your hens, and such 

 mating results in poor birds, you have lost the season. I 

 often see advertisements in poultry journals in which breed- 

 ers offer stock for sale produced from twenty-seven to 

 thirty-one-pound hens and forty to forty-seven-pound toms. 

 Such claims are intended to catch amateurs, for any breeder 

 of experience knows that a hen that weighs twenty-seven 

 pounds never lays fertile eggs, and 

 a torn that weighs forty-seven 

 pounds never fertilizes an egg. 



HATCHING AND RAISING POULTS. 



I allow the hens to have their 

 own way about their nests, al- 

 though I place barrels on their 

 sides along hedges and in secluded 

 places in the orchard and fence 

 corners, in each putting a small 

 quantity of straw. The hens gen- 

 erally nest in the barrels and I re- 

 move the eggs every day until the 

 hen is ready to set. I then give 

 her seventeen eggs and at the 

 same time put ten eggs under a 

 domestic hen to hatch. All the 

 poults are given to the turkey hen 

 to raise, as I find that a turkey 

 knows more about taking care of 

 poults than I do. I give her a good 

 feed of corn and a drink of water 

 and then let her go where she likes. If there is a 

 meadow or pasture within three-quarters of a mile, 

 that is where she will go. I have one hen that hatched six- 

 teen poults and I gave her nine more hatched by a domestic 

 hen and she raised twenty-two of them. I have never seen 

 a fence that will confine turkeys unless one wing is clipped, 

 then a four-foot netting with a barbed wire above will keep 

 them confined, but I -do not wish to confine my turkeys ex- 

 cept occasionally for a short time. Once in a while I have 

 a hen that wanders too far from home to build her nest. 

 I have an orchard covering about two acres which is in- 

 closed with netting and barbed wire and in which I keep my 

 Silver Laced Wyandottes during the breeding season. I 

 bring the wandering turkey home, clip her wing and put her 

 in the pen described until she lays out her clutch. If a hen 

 and her brood get to running away and going to the neigh- 

 bors', I put them in the chicken yard for about ten days, 

 after which I have no further trouble with them. I look 

 after the hens with poults on bad days when I cannot work 

 in the fields. If 1 find any weak poults I examine them for 

 lice, and if I find any lice I give the poults a good dusting 

 with insect powder. If the weather is dry, the poults find 

 enough dust in which to wallow to keep down the lice, but 



