34 



TURKEYS— THEIR CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 



IN REGARD TO TURKEYS. 



We do not keep the young birds for breeders because 

 they are not matured enough. Breeders should be at least 

 ten or eleven months old, the older and more mature the 

 fow is, the better the breeder. We may not get so many 

 eggs from the females, but we get better ones. The one 

 drawback to two-year-old turkeys and older is that we let 

 them get too fat in this corn country during the winter. 

 W'j have never been able to secure such large clutches of 

 eggs as some claim. We get an average of twelve in the 

 first clutch and about ten m the second. Some hens will 

 lay more, and some will lay three clutches, but they are less 

 in number and we never count much on them, for the hens 

 usually hide their nests and we seldom bother about them. 

 Occasionally a hen willl lay a large number of eggs, in fact, 

 will lay all summer, but such eggs are seldom fertile. We 

 have mated fifteen females with one torn with good results, 

 and we do not believe there was any larger percentage of in- 

 fertile eggs than when we mated a torn with two females. 

 Turkey eggs are usually fertile if the hens are not too fat. 

 We put our hens on "starvation rations," as we call it, when 

 nearing the breeding season. At that time we feed mostly 

 oats, meat and vegetables. Turkey eggs incubate in twenty- 

 eight days, and when the weather is very warm a day or so 

 less time is required, but we do not remember ever having 

 one sit over twenty-eight days. Turkey hens seldom hide 

 their nests for the first clutch. In the second they make the 

 attempt, but we watch them and if they want to go too far 

 away we drive them nearer home and thus get them to com- 

 mence laying in a nest more convenient to us. We gather 

 the eggs and keep them in a cool place, placing them on the 

 small end, and if we should keep them long, we turn them, 

 but as a rule, we do not keep them long enough to take that 

 trouble, for if we do not set them ourselves, our customers 

 are waiting for them. We have generally had better suc- 

 cess in putting eggs under domestic hens, but we do not let 

 them raise 1he poults. We always have a turkey hen wait- 

 ing to take them. If a turkey has been sitting two weeks, 

 or even less, she will take the young if they are put under 

 her when a few hours old. We have tried putting pipped 

 eggs under the turkey, but too many of them get mashed, 

 so this year we waited until the poults were a few hours old. 

 If a turkey chooses to sit in the proper place, we put eggs 

 under her and set a domestic hen at the same time, but give 

 all the poults to the turkey. 



CARE OF POULTS. 



We used to keep the poults and the mother hen penned 

 up for about ten days or two weeks, feeding the young tur- 

 keys three or four times a day on boiled eggs, dandelions, 

 curd and bread soaked with milk. They did very well, but 

 we think now it was a mistaken kindness, for we lost a 

 larger per cent of the young in the fall. We think that 

 with all our care we invariably overfed, but they did not 

 show the effects until fall. Now we make a practice of 

 keeping the hen and poults penned up four or five days, feed- 

 ing very sparingly on boiled eggs, dandelions or any green 

 plant, such as onions or lettuce, and a little bread. We 

 have discarded curds altogether as we think it is too much, 

 work for the benefit, in fact, we have almost concluded that 

 it is a detriment to the turkeys, for when we fed it we were 

 bothered by the fowls having worms more than we are now. 

 This season we went to very little trouble to feed them after 

 the hen was set at liberty. If it were convenient we fed 

 them twice or three times a day, but if not, we looked after 

 them at evening to see where they roosted, and fed them, 

 giving them some kind of cooked food, oatmeal, and bran, 

 and later a mash composed of equal parts of corn meal, 

 middlings and bran, with a little meat meal, bone and Vene- 

 tian red. The food we gave them was so little that we did 



net consider it necessary, and as they grew older they did 

 not have use for it, but we still fed them in order to keep 

 them tame and teach them that they had a home. Never- 

 theless, we frequently had to drive them home. A turkey 

 on a farm range will take care of her flock and raise them 

 strong and vigorous with very little food from the house. 



There is much ado about young poults being killed by 

 damp weather and by being out in the dew. By the time a 

 turkey hatches in this climate it is not likely to be very 

 cold, and unless the ground is so low that the land is 

 flooded, there is little danger from rains. This has been a 

 very wet summer in our locality, and we had hens out in 

 heavy rains when the poults were but a few days old and 

 we did not lose a poult nor did the young get wet. We have 

 a large orchard and grove that furnishes a great deal of 

 protection, but often the hen sat out as far from the trees 

 as she could get, not to entirely leave the orchard, still there 

 were no poults drowned. We think during such wet spells 

 that the poults need to be fed more regularly, as they cannot 

 hunt for their food. We have lost more young by having 

 the old hen go into a coop with a part of the flock, the other 

 part, being left out and drowning, than we ever did when the 

 hen. was out with the flock. After the frosts kill the bugs, 

 grasshoppers, etc., the turkeys require more food, and we 

 feed them morning and night a small ration, increasing it 

 as the food in the meadows and pastures decreases. In the 

 morning we feed a mash with the same ingredients that we 

 fed to the poults while young, with the addition of charcoal 

 and oil meal in small quantities. We also give them 

 cracked bone and grit, all they will eat of the latter, and at 

 night coarse cracked corn and soaked oats. Now if the 

 young poults are not fed to death, so to speak, there^vill be 

 little, if any, indigestion, and if a case now and then appears 

 lessen the food, and in individual cases give the fowl a full 

 tablespoonful of castor oil with from five to ten drops of 

 turpentine in it. If one dose is not enough, give two or 

 three, or even more, one dose a day, and search for lice. We 

 have invariably noticed that the debilitated fowl always be- 

 comes lousy and generally has worms, as these pests invari- 

 ably follow indigestion. 



FEEDING CORN. 



Do not begin too soon to feed corn. Last year we fed 

 our chickens considerable cracked corn in the outside 

 scratching pens. Our turkeys soon learned this and were 

 on hand by three or four o'clock, if they had not hung 

 around all day waiting for evening, and they got a large 

 share of the corn. As a consequence, we lost a lot of fine 

 birds from indigestion. We could not cure it, as we did not 

 remove the cause. We wanted fat chickens and we paid for 

 them with our best turkeys, but we learned our lesson. 

 Keep your turkeys going out on the range as long as pos- 

 sible. Drive them away in the morning if they will not go. 

 When the weather becomes cold and the proper time for fat- 

 tening comes, then feed corn and heavy grain. We would 

 never fatten the birds intended for breeders if the purchas- 

 ers did not demand heavy weights, as fat is a detriment to 

 the birds. We cannot blame the purchasers, as this is about 

 the only way they can be sure of getting a large fowl and 

 so they call for actual weights; but the tall, rangy, well- 

 shaped, long, coarse-legged turkey, even if he does look 

 slim in the fall, is the one that will be a large bird. Our 

 first turkeys purchased were low, blocky birds, and they 

 were almost as heavy in the late fall as they ever got. We 

 thought them fine at first, but ii did not take us long to 

 change our minds, so that the next autumn we purchased 

 a trio of birds from a well-known breeder. When they came 

 the fowls were but a pound or two heavier than our old 

 stock, but they were long legged, awkward, green looking 

 birds, and we were pleased with them, for we could see into 



