TURKEYS AND HOW TO RAISE THEM 131 



Keep Liver Healthy 



I can tell you just how overfed turkeys will die. First they will 

 walk slowly, lagging behind the others, as if tired, then their wings 

 will droop and they will look sleepy and will not eat, will look at 

 the food as if they wanted it, but were too lazy to pick it up, then 

 diarrhoea will set in, the droppings will become yellow and some- 

 times green, and death will soon follow. If you hold a postmortem 

 examination, as you should do over everything that dies in the 

 chicken yard, you will find the liver of these little turkeys has yel- 

 low or white spots on it, and on cutting into it, you may find that 

 these spots are small ulcers that extend through it. Sometimes 

 these ulcers are quite offensive. This comes from overfeeding, 

 which gives the liver more work than it can do and it breaks down. 



The liver is the largest organ in the turkey's body, and it seems 

 to be the most delicate. If you can keep that healthy, you will have 

 healthy turkeys. Onions and dandelion leaves are tonic for the 

 liver and the green food keeps it healthy, whilst the animal food 

 and a small amount of cereal will make, the frame of the turkey. 



Suppose you should see one little turkey in the brood begin- 

 ning to walk slowly, what should you do? I will tell you what I 

 would do. I would catch that little turkey and give a Carter's 

 Little Liver Pill and follow this the next day with a little Epsom 

 salts for the whole flock, and cut off some of the grain in the feed. 

 You will probably save the flock, but they may be stunted in their 

 growth, and their liver many months later may break down from 

 being weakened by that first attack of liver trouble. 



Chick Feed for Turkeys 



Now about the chick feed. It is composed of a number of differ- 

 ent grains. Some of these grains are extremely difficult of digestion 

 for turkeys. The chief of these are cracked corn, Kaffir corn, Egyp- 

 tian corn, sorghum seed, millet, etc. I could scarcely believe this 

 until I had ocular demonstration of it. Then I discovered that 

 cracked corn did not commence to digest in the crop ; the gastric 

 juice of the crop does not seem to have any influence on it. It 

 passes through the crop and on through the proventriculus to the 

 gizzard, arriving there hard and not in the least softened or di- 

 gested, and there it commences to ferment, causing diarrhoea or 

 else passing away without digesting. I am not scientific enough to 

 • know the reason for this nor why wheat should be softened in the 

 crop and partly digested before reaching the gizzard, but I know 

 that it is so. They told me in Kansas that corn soured on the tur- 

 keys' stomachs, but it does not exactly sour, it ferments — and there 

 is where the trouble comes in. 



Sour milk is sour, but this is from lactic acid, and lactic acid 

 seems beneficial to turkeys, whilst the souring of grains, bran, 

 cereals of any kind, or cornmeal is a ferment, and ferments are 

 very injurious to fowls of all kinds, and especially so to turkeys. 



Mrs. Charles Jones, the best authority on turkeys in the United 

 States, agrees with me about feeding turkeys. She writes : 



