RATIONS FOR FLEDING YOUNG TURKEYS. 49 



squeezeil dry, mixeil with hard boiled eggs, including shells finely lnokeii. This 

 food is alternated with bread and clabber cheese, oat flake and egg, or cheese sea- 

 soned with a little salt and pepper. After the little ones are about a week old I 

 begin mixing a little whole or cracked wheat, Indian corn, Kaffir corn, or millet 

 with the cooked food, and thus they learn to eat grain. Always try to feed no 

 more than they will eat up clean each time. VWien they are about a week old I 

 begin to drop the white bread, and give them instead what I call a brown light 

 l)read made the same as white bread, using one-half white flour, (a cheap grade 

 will do), and the other half about equal parts of shorts and bran, with a hand- 

 ful or two of corn meal. The meal makes it crumble easily. The bread should he 

 allowed to dry for a day or two before feeding; if fed fresh it may choke the 

 poults. I gradually drop the white bread and egg», and feed instead the brown 

 bread and cheese. When about six weeks old they have become accustomed lo 

 the grain food, which, ^illce tliey were three weeks old, ha-i been kept by them in 

 troughs in coops so constructed that the little turkeys can get in and Re older 

 fowls are kept out. By the time the poults are ni[ie or ten weeks old I have 

 dropped the soft or cooked feed to once or twice per day. By September the older 

 poults are dependent upon grain'food and range. For fattening I had good resulls 

 with a mixture of grains proportioned as follows : Two bushels whole corn, two 

 bushels cracked corn, one bushel oats, one bushel Kaffir corn." — Mrs. Hakguave. 

 Ration V. An All Oorn Hation. — " Succes'^ful Rhode Island growers, as a rule, feed 

 their turkeys from start to finish on northern white flint corn, which they 

 grow themselves. They take great pains to feed nothing but well seasoned old 

 corn, because they have found that new corn causes bowel trouble. Turkeys 

 not only like northern flint corn best, and fatten best on it, but it makes their 

 flesh more tender, juicy, and delicious. That given the little ones is coarsely 

 ground, and mixed with sweet or sour milk, or made into bread that is moistened 

 with milk. This is gradually mixed with cracked corn, which, when they 

 are about eight weeks old, is fed clear or mixed with sour milk. In the full 

 whole corn is given. After June 1st those at full liberty are usually fed but 

 twice daily. They are hunted up and fed in the fields, that they may stay awiiy 

 from the farmyard and out buildings. Many give the turkeys no food from Au- 

 gust 1st until cool weather. They get their own living until they come up from 

 the 'fields ia Septeml)er or October. Upon the approach of cold weather they 

 come to the house to he fed, and thereafter roam but little. 



" To fatten them for Thanksgiving, they are fed in November all the whole 

 corn they will eat three times per day. It is not necessary to coop them. The 

 full feeding causes them to rest and sun themselves. Dough is not much used 

 for fattening in Ilhode Island. One grower who gives it every morning, and whole 

 corn at uiglit, mixes conviition powder with the dough, and finds it causes 

 them to eiit more and gain faster. Some raisers give a little new corn mixed 

 with the old at this time, liot most consider it safer to feed clear old corn. It is 

 not best to heavily feed turkeys that are to be held for a later market, or those to 

 be kept over for breeding." — Cushman. 

 Supplementing these rations let me say that in an extended trip among Rhode Island 

 turkey growers, I found it the general opinion of the more successful that with other conditions 

 favorable, the method of feeding was not of great importance, provided the young turkeys got 

 enough to eat, and a variety. These successful turkey growers also agreed that care was 

 of first importance, and one woman who was said to have been uniformly successful for many 

 years, made the following interesting observation on the subject of care in relation to feed- 

 ing; she said that the only difl"erence she could see between her method of handling turkeys 

 and that of various neighbors who were less successful, was that she made it a rule to hunt 

 the turkeys up in the fields on wet or dull days when they did not forage freely, and when 

 insects to be secured by foraging were f;ir lesa numerous than on lirigbt days, while most of 

 her neighbors fed the turkeys on fine days when food was more abundant and more easily 



