THE GAME BREEDER 



117 



will presently become obvious only the 

 last of these methods will be mentioned in 

 detail, the first two methods may be con- 

 sidered briefly. 



Although nature's methods, involving 

 the rigorous eliminations accompanying 

 natural selection, are usually sufficiently 

 well devised at least to perpetuate the 

 species, they are very often, when held 

 up to the standard of modern efficiency 

 tests, sadly lacking in results. Many 

 seeds are blown by the wind that one 

 may gain a favorable lodgment in pro- 

 ductive soil. Man naturally attempts to 

 improve upon nature and one of two 

 things usually results; either nature is 

 completely thwarted and becomes wholly 

 unproductive, or man, holding in check 

 certain unfavorable conditions, but per- 

 mitting the operation of others that are 

 favorable, vastly improves the situa- 

 tion and with a considerable saving. Na- 

 ture works for the perpetuation of the 

 species while man works for the conser- 

 vation of the individual. 



These general concepts apply to the 

 raising of turkeys as fully as to the arti- 

 ficial propagation of any undomesticated 

 or partly domesticated animal species. 

 We might in the first place be led to as- 

 sume that the turkey mother is the best 

 mother for the poults because she is the 

 natural mother. But the natural mother 

 is the wild mother and the wild mother 

 is hostile and antagonistic to man's arti- 

 ficial methods; she becomes adapted to 

 them with difficulty. There is no doubt 

 that, leaving aside questions of black- 

 head, young turkeys can be reared suc- 

 cessfully under turkey mothers, but with 

 the exception of raising turkeys on wide 

 and wild ranges, the results are likely to 

 be unsatisfactory. For this reason, this 

 phase of turkey raising will now be 

 passed over, but may be considered in 

 detail in a subsequent publication. 



The method employed for raising 

 under purely artificial conditions as in 

 brooders, yards and pens, has been 

 alluded to in a previous bulletin and need 

 not be repeated here. We thus come to 

 what is in all probability the most prac- 

 ticable method of brooding, namely 

 under the ordinary hen. The chief ad- 



vantage of this arrangement is that the 

 ordinary hen will not carry her brood 

 too far afield when they are young. She 

 is less likely to take her young into the 

 wet grass, and more likely to remain at 

 home with them in times of storm. She 

 is not so easily excited as the turkey 

 mother by many of the details of man- 

 agement. One always knows where to 

 find her; and, so far as hunting for 

 the young pOults and giving them every 

 attention in the early days of feeding is 

 concerned, she is. greatly superior to the 

 turkey hen. Moreover she is more per- 

 sistent in her broodiness; she is driven 

 from the brood with difficulty and pro- 

 tects them with courage when danger 

 threatens. In these respects the turkey 

 hen is inferior. She is more easily 

 brought to abandon her brood and sel- 

 dom possesses the spirit of the ordinary 

 hen in their defense. Her chief aim 

 seems to be to carry her offspring as 

 far as possible from the haunts of man 

 and his artificial methods. To succeed 

 in the use of the turkey mothers, either 

 they or the poults must, a.t least during 

 the early stages, be closely confined if 

 the measures to be considered in the next 

 section are to be of value. 



The Usual Result. 



George Edgar, game keeper for the 

 Wyandanch Club wrote: "Please dis- 

 continue advertisement after this month 

 since it brought all the orders I can fill, 

 thanking you very much for advising me 

 to advertise in The Game Breeder. 



Now is the time to advertise birds for 

 fall delivery. Those who get their ad- 

 vertisements in first will have the largest 

 mail, of course, and they will get the 



best prices and make early deliveries. 



— ♦ 



Game breeders in the West and on the 

 Pacific Coast will please take notice that 

 they can get much better prices for their 

 birds and eggs than many now are get- 

 ting, if they will advertise in The Game 

 Breeder. It only costs a few cents to 

 prove the truth of this advice. We have 

 large numbers of letters from advertisers 

 thanking us for finding good customers. 



