TURKEYS— THEIR CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 



55 



perience. Yet there are no better insecticides than these 

 liquid lice killers it properly used. They will kill mites and 

 ohiggers and everything in that line, even bedbugs, which 

 Infest hen houses in some localities. 



Southern turkey breeders complain that many poults 

 ara killed by chiggers, which do more damage than any 

 other one thing. 



We presume this is the little grass chigger which bur- 

 ies itself in the flesh — at least it does on people— and is 

 very hard to exterminate and very painful to endure. We 

 had never thought of this. The only remedy known to us 

 is grease, and too much of that is fatal to the poults. 



In the late fall and winter lice are hard on turkeys— 

 they cannot find good dust baths as they can in summer, 

 hence it is necessary to use our best efforts to kill the ver- 

 min on them, for they cannot thrive with vermin sapping 

 their strength. 



PREPARING TURKEYS FOR MARKET. 



Many persons wish to know when to begin to prepare 

 turkeys for market. The best time to begin is when they 

 are hatched and keep up the preparation until they are put 

 on the market. If you live on a grain or stock farm let 

 your turkeys have free access to the feeding stalls and grain 

 shocks and they will take care of themselves. If you, like 

 myself, are limited to a sm'all place, the feeding must be 

 kept up all the year. It will not do to increase the food 

 too rapidly at first. During the summer feed adult turkeys 

 only once a day, but about September I begin feeding them 

 twice a day, morning and evening, all that they will eat, 

 or rather, as I keep the parent stock in the pens, my plan 

 has been to scatter the food in the morning so that L hey 

 shall be kept busy all day hunting for it. At night I give 

 a full feed where they pan get it without any trouble, and 

 gradually increase the quantity of food as the cold 

 weather approaches. I find that both old and young turkeys 

 thrive better and eat more when the food is scattered than 

 when it is given to them in pans. I have long since discard- 

 ed feeding troughs in my poultry yards. They were a dis- 

 advantage to both old and young. In my opinion much of 

 the so-called cholera is traceable to the feeding trough. 

 Turkeys especially are naturally inclined to take a smau 

 quantity of food at a time and when fed in troughs they 

 will fill their crops and do not take enough exercise to cause 

 good digestion. 



For fattening I prefer corn to anything else, unless it be 

 crushed corn. Feed whole corn on the ear or scatter it in 

 straw so they must work to get it. 



If you have never noticed the necessity of lime tor 

 turkeys watch them pick whitewash off the sides of houses 

 Make this difference in the treatment of those intended for 

 market and those kept to breed from: Put all the food be- 

 fore the market fowl it will eat; make it as fat as P°«»ibie 

 but if you get your breeding stock too fat, infertile eggs 

 will be the result. _.„„ v . 



Be sure you do not wait until the day before Thanks- 

 giving to try to sell your stock. The highest prices .^ , us- 

 ually obtainable the week before the holiday feasts. As a 

 rule there is a great rush to market with turkeys two days 

 before Thanksgiving. The rush often causes the price to 

 drop just when the most was expected. I have known the 

 highest prices to be obtained between Thanksgiving and 

 Christmas and in February. Of course the locality has 

 something to do with the price, and there may, m tne same 

 locality, be different influences at different seasons We 

 have to do as our husbands do with their stock, wa.ch and 

 sell at the most propitious time. If I had only a few I would 

 sell all at once, but if I raised from seventy-five to a hun- 



dred I should sell at different times. One can sell the 

 oldest first, thus giving the younger ones a chance. Mar- 

 ket birds can not be too fat, but they may be too heavy 

 for the highest prices. A few farmers in our county un- 

 derstand this, and do not buy the largest toms to breed 

 from; others run to the other extreme, inbreeding and buy- 

 ing culls until their turkeys are too small to 'be profitable. 

 I should prefer large breeding stock to small, even if I 

 sold on the market, for if I get a lower price the difference 

 in pounds would more than make the difference in price. 



How much ought young toms to weigh at Thanksgiving, 

 is a question often asked me. That depends on when they 

 were hatched. An early hatched, say one hatched in May, 

 will weigh from twenty to twenty-four pounds, and some 

 few will go higher. One market poultryman says that an 

 average of eighteen and twenty pounds is the rule, while 

 those going above that are the exception. 



I have been asked if I think it better to dress turkeys 

 or sell them on foot; "which is the most profitable?" The 

 answer to this (as most answers are) is dependent. I have 

 a friend who dresses her turkeys about the middle of Feb- 

 ruary for the St. Louis market. She says she makes money 

 by so doing. I know others who say it does not pay them 

 at all. 



The cause of the difference of opinion lies in the dif- 

 ference of surroundings. The lady who says it pays her 

 to dress her turkeys for market does the work herself and 

 says she makes fair wages at the difference in the price be- 

 tween dressed turkeys and turkeys on foot. My opinion is 

 that the average farmer's wife had better sell her turkeys 

 on foot, but this is a question upon which there is a dif- 

 ference of opinion and one which each one must decide for 

 herself. 



I never sold a dressed turkey, yet I know how farmers' 

 wives dress them for our market, and I dress them for my 

 own table the same way. We cut the heads off and let 

 them bleed well and then dry pick them and remove their 

 entrails, washing them thoroughly with cold or luke warm 

 water. Plump the carcass by pouring boiling water over it, 

 then salt and let it freeze before cooking, if possible. Very 

 few salt them to put them on the market. 



Talk about turkeys eating their heads off! If a man 

 sells hogs at five cents a pound he thinks he is doing a 

 fine business, says he is getting fifty cents a bushel for his 

 corn, but when a woman sells her turkeys even at eight 

 cents a pound she is doing far better and is doing her hus- 

 band a double favor; it is a favor to him for her to pay 

 her own and part of his bills; besides she gets eight cents 

 a pound for grasshoppers, which but for her turkeys would 

 destroy the corn fodder and injure the hay as well as ruin 

 ths cabbage. 



PREPARING TURKEYS FOR EXHIBITION. 

 This one thing I never lose sight of or forget— the show 

 room. Not alone for the scores I wish to receive on my 

 birds, but on account of the remembrance of what I gain at 

 the shows in point of knowledge and the pleasure I derive 

 from association with the many noble men and women to 

 be met there. 



Many timid ones are deterred from entering the show 

 room because they dread coming in competition with the 

 moguls of the poultry business. To such I say, come! You 

 have nothing to lose by the comparison and you may be 

 a winner of the prizes. At any rate you will know what 

 the judges think of your birds, and will learn how to im- 

 prove your stock. The show room is an educator and we 

 need all the education we can get if we intend to stay in 

 the business. Nor does it follow that because they fail to 



