354 Next to the Ground 



winter turkeys could be raised by taking 

 pains, but they were always so stunted, never 

 half the size of the spring hatch — they did 

 not pay for the trouble. 



Heavy thunder just as the eggs were ready 

 to hatch often killed a whole brood in the 

 shell. Like all other beaked young creat- 

 ures, turkeys have a very sharp small triangle 

 of horn at the tip of the beak, whose use is 

 to chip the shell. It can be pinched ofF with 

 the thumb-nail. Mammy always pinched it 

 ofF — she said to make the turkeys healthy. 

 She also always made them swallow a whole 

 black-pepper corn, the minute they were out 

 of the nest. For the first thirty-six hours 

 turkeys are the most delicate of all young 

 fowls — after that, with proper care, they 

 thrive amazingly. At a week a healthy 

 poult will eat his own weight in fresh clabber 

 three times a day. But salt is poison to 

 them. Black Mammy let her mother tur- 

 keys go free as air, but kept the young ones 

 secured in three-cornered pens of twelve-inch 

 plank set edge-wise, changing the pen to a 

 spot of clean earth every morning. 



The mothers did not go far, and the young 

 were kept from straying. Young turkeys 

 have an insensate habit of running off after 

 anything in motion, even though they leave 

 their mothers to do it. Their wing feathers 



