14 



THE GAME BREEDER 



at the bottom and gradually increasing 

 in width. As my turkeys are not pin- 

 ioned, they have to have a wing clipped 

 and in order to catch them for this pur- 

 pose they are driven, or decoyed into a 

 narrow wire passage. 



About a third of this field is in tall 

 pines, carefully trimmed up, however, 

 within five or six feet of the fence. The 

 rest of the ground is cultivated, part in 

 corn, part peas, a portion in an oats and 

 grass mixture, and now it is time to 

 sow turnip and clover. It is not only 

 to supply them with food that this cul- 

 tivating is done, but to keep the ground 

 sweet, for I think a turkey must be the 

 most easily diseased of all birds. But 

 perhaps I should say the most difficult 

 to cure. I have heard farmers say, "a 

 sick sheep is a dead sheep," and I used 

 to think the same of my turkeys, but 

 now I have reached the length of doc- 

 toring them pretty successfully for 

 everything but gapes. 



The turkeys lay their eggs in the piney 

 part of this lot, making their own nest 

 and it has always been a question 

 whether the crows or I should find the 

 nest first. I put a china egg or a round 

 white stone for a nest egg, to disappoint 

 the crow and keep the birds laying in the 

 same nest, and of course gather the eggs 

 daily. These I set under a domestic tur- 

 key and she rears the poults on our farm 

 of three hundred and seventy-five acres, 

 even rambling over as much more 

 ground on a neighboring farm. The 

 larger the number of turkeys the farther 

 they roam, and thus they meet many of 

 the native wild turkeys which abound 

 down the Newfound and Little rivers. 

 This necessitates my confining the 

 young ones in the early fall or winter, 

 because, while they will stay with their 

 foster mother a long time as they get 

 fully grown they are sure to leave to 

 join their wood kinsmen. But while still 

 following their mother they can be 

 driven into shelter and caught. 



Now as to the attention given the little 

 wild ones : I suppose every'turkey raiser 

 knows nearly all turkey diseases are of 

 the liver and intestines. To regulate the 

 liver I feed green food at everv meal, 



either chopped lettuce or onion tops, 

 raised for this purpose, or wild pepper 

 grass. They prefer the onion tops to 

 any other green, but will eat lettuce thor- 

 oughly mixed with the curd, and it is 

 easy to raise an abundance of it. When 

 this great amount of green affects the 

 bowels, as it often does, bringing on that 

 turkey scourge, white diarrhoea, I give 

 Epsom salts, a teaspoonful to twelve 

 poults, mixed with a little curd and they, 

 if hungry, have eaten enough before 

 they taste the difference. Turpentine is 

 just as necessary; as it smells so strong, 

 they have to be deceived into eating the 

 curd in the same way. The curd I refer 

 to its ordinary clabber scalded (not 

 boiled, it is useless then) squeeze dry 

 and it should crumble like cold bread if 

 right. This is their first food, alternated 

 with stale white bread soaked in sweet 

 milk ; squeezed dry, not doughy. ■ After 

 ten days, I feed cooked corn bread, sea- 

 soned with a little salt just as for the 

 table, soaked in sweet milk. At ' this 

 time a little grain should be fed; as the 

 wheat and oats are cut a little later here, 

 they then get all their own food from 

 the gleanings. And now, late in August, 

 they are prone to add a little corn in 

 the milk state, of their own free will. 

 But I always feed something at night to 

 bring them home, often a mash from the 

 formula prescribed by the Rhode Island 

 Experiment Station: 



6 parts corn meal. 



4 parts bran. 



2 parts middlings. 



1 part linseed meal. 



They like it moistened with buttermilk 

 ' or sour milk, though I often use water. 

 The poults thrive on Spratt's Turkey 

 meal and on chicgrain, also. But what- 

 ever is used, I have found it necessary 

 forcibly to feed them at first. I think 

 when they grow less wild, in a genera- 

 tion or two, this may not be necessary. 



After the young ones are ten or twelve 

 weeks old, they can live on the insects 

 and greens they find for themselves, if 

 they have access to grain fields or where 

 grain has been harvested, and just need 

 cracked corn, wheat, or oats or mash, 

 anything to bring them home to roost. 



