Breeding and Rearing Turkeys. 
52i 
meal, Do not fail to give fresh cool water two or three times a day , and milk is good for an 
occasional drink. 
“ When the young are about three weeks old, the old bird may be let out with them every 
morning after the dew is off the grass, and shut up every evening. They should then have food 
placed under a frame with slats, so as to keep the old birds from it. When the young get so that 
they can fly up to roost, their quarters should be changed to the turkey-house. This house can be 
built to suit the taste of the owner, but a rough board shed, made secure against dogs, foxes, &c., is 
sufficient. It should be provided with broad perches of easy access from the ground, so as to avoid 
crooked breasts and other injuries. The old and young should be confined in this house every 
evening, and well fed night and morning with a variety of food ; during the day they will roam 
over the farm, and devour quantities of grasshoppers and other insects. 
“ The Turkey does not attain his full weight until his third year. I never weighed a brood of 
turkeys but once, and that was in February, 1871. They were then just eight months old. Eight 
gobblers weighed from twenty-three and a half pounds to twenty-nine and a half pounds each, and 
the eight averaged twenty-five and a half pounds ; six hens from thirteen and a half pounds to 
fifteen pounds each, averaging a little over fourteen pounds. These were remarkably good chicks 
for their age. They were raised from a fourteen-and-a-half-pound hen and a thirty-two-pound 
gobbler. Strange as it may appear, it is a fact that I have always succeeded in raising better 
chicks from hens of fourteen to fifteen pounds than those of heavier weight ; but a fine large 
gobbler is of the greatest importance. As above stated, however, he should have his weight 
reduced, for the sake of the hens, before breeding.” 
The description of the Bronze Turkey in detail will be found in the schedule, which we copy 
from the American “ Standard of Excellence,” at the end of this chapter, and from which it will 
be seen how closely it resembles the wild breed. 
Mr. Simpson’s notes contain all the essentials of good turkey management ; but some further 
remarks appear advisable, and the more so as there has been on some points a difference of 
opinion. Thus, we have seen it stated that Mr. Lythall prefers to breed from gobblers not 
exceeding two years old, and his example has been quoted as if conclusive in favour of this 
course. Mr. Lythall, however, crossed the Bronze with the Cambridge, putting the cock sent to 
Birmingham in 1870 by Mr. Simpson to his own hens, and showing, in 1871, a young turkey- 
cock, the produce of the cross, which weighed twenty-eight pounds at six months old, and took 
fiist pi ize in the young class. Now the cockerel here mentioned, and which was certainly the 
heaviest then bred in England, was bred from Mr. Simpson’s old bird ; and as the Americans 
have hitherto beaten us in weights, this agreement with their theory is conclusive, besides 
being borne out by the almost unanimous opinion of English breeders. The great objection to 
using old gobbleis lies in their weight ; but a way to remedy this has already been pointed out, 
and removes the difficulty entirely. Mr. William W. Clift, another celebrated American turkey 
breeder, and formerly editor of the American Agriculturist , in an article upon breeding turkeys, in 
the American Poultry World , is equally “strong” upon the necessity of using fine matured males. 
“In rearing this or any other variety,” he says, “almost everything depends upon the parent 
birds ; yet in nothing are farmers more careless. The common practice is to sell off the heaviest 
birds at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and take the late birds of light weight for breeding. The 
excuse for this is that the heavy cocks wear the feathers from the hen’s back, and the heavy hens 
are more apt to break the eggs in the nest. Both these notions are old wives’ fables, that ouMit to 
be banished from the poultry-yard. Another objectionable practice is to breed only from yetrlino 
hens. The old birds are very generally sold off because they have four or five more pounds of 
