714 
Ibt RURAL NEW-YORKER 
May 27. 1022 
abnormal feather growth, which soon causes trou¬ 
ble, and wings and tail are too far advanced for the 
remainder of the body feathers. Note carefully such 
results, and if they appear to be growing too fast 
in any one section, reduce the feed and make them 
hunt for most of their living. Some advocate cut¬ 
ting the feathers on wings and tail, but this I have 
found to he wrong, as by so doing the birds must 
again grow this unnecessary amount of plumage, 
which saps vitality . There is no other one thing 
that kills more turkeys every year than too much 
feeding, and especially of soft foods. Commercial 
chick feed is very good to keep constantly before 
young turkeys, but always see that only a small 
amount is put down at one time. Keep everything 
clean and sweet. That is one of the secrets of suc- 
cussfnl turkey raising. 
TURKEYS vs. HENS.—Tf you have made your 
start with eggs y< u will most likely have to set 
them under hens and raise them with these, but as 
a rule turkeys are much more satisfactory for 
mothers than are hens, because the former will lead 
their young through the fields and get the natural 
foods, where if raised with a hen she just drags 
them around the buildings at a trot, and usually 
buries them under her dirty feet while trying to 
unearth a worm, which after all is not the best of 
food for them. Young turkeys prefer bugs and 
insects with wings to worms, although they will 
sometimes pick up all such life as may wiggle at 
their approach. However, if you will eateli a grass¬ 
hopper and an angleworm, you will find that the 
former is always snatched first. Likewise any in¬ 
sect with wings seems preferable at all times. There 
are always points for and against any method of 
bird breeding, but you will find in the long run that 
more turkeys can be raised to maturity by the tur¬ 
keys themselves than can he raised with'liens. True, 
if you have close neighbors, and you cannot allow 
your turkeys free range, then the hen must'answer, 
as she stays close at home and does not stay away 
at night, hut the chances for gapes and infestation 
from parasites js many times greater. 
PATERNAL CARE—The very best method of 
rearing is to use the tom turkey—the father of the 
flock. You will note in Fig. 203 several mature 
White Holland toms which care for their broods 
of young turkeys. Some of these ■toms are several 
years old, and have had a wide experience. Old 
touis are always best to breed from, as they produce 
much stronger poults than do young toms in their 
first season, and they make more expert nurses after 
a season or two with their charges. White Hollands 
are more gentle and much more easily handled thau 
any other breed, but unfortunately there are but 
few pure White Hollands in the country, the old 
strain having been ruined by breeders who have 
crossed them with Bronze in order to increase size. 
True. White Hollands are a small turkey, or perhaps 
I should say of medium weight, short in legs and 
with compact bodies. The long-legged, overgrown 
gander type of white turkeys seen so often these 
days are not Hollands, and should not be used. The 
old tom will give tlie brood more careful attention 
than the mother turkey will, and he won't stray 
nearly as far from home. Ours make several cir¬ 
cuits daily, returning to the coops every few hours 
with the broods. At these times we feed the tom a 
little, but not enough to satisfy him ; just enough to 
let him*know that a short meal awaits each return, 
and it is surprising how soon they learn to know 
this. If the day is cloudy, and not a large amount 
of insect life seems stirring, then we would feed a 
little to the young at each return, but if hot weather 
it is just as well to let them remain a bit hungry 
until the night meal, -at which time they can have 
access to the chick feed, and if still small a light 
feed of bread and milk. 
PROTECTION FROM RAIN.—It is not always 
easy to pick up a large brood of small turkeys in 
the deep grass in a hurry at the approach of a sud¬ 
den shower, but if very young this must be done. 
We have a large willow basket with hinged cover, 
and if rain threatens we go out at once and pick up 
the birds, and the touts follow immediately to the 
coops, where they are confined until the ground is 
again dry. Care must he taken lest you trample 
the young, which are sure to hide in the deep grass. 
If you count the turks as you pick them up you will 
know how many are lacking, and can then carefully 
limit them out An experienced person can make 
a noise like the old tom, or hen, and the skulkers 
will answer you and betray their hiding place. The 
art of turkey raising can he easily mastered by any 
person who has a little patience, but if you don’t 
possess that, don’t try to raise anything. The 
secret with turkeys, as with all things with which 
we have to deal, is largely perseverance. From a 
child the love for live stock was always before me, 
but I was hampered by living in a wild region, 
where farming was not possible, so I studied the 
subject—we could not raise corn or cotton, but we 
found we could raise goats and turkeys, and I have 
made a success. So can you. wilxet Randall. 
A Vigorous Elm Tree 
A BOUT 1SS4 or 1885 there was sent from Wi.l- 
mette. Ill., 14 miles from-Chicago, on the shore 
of Lake Michigan, to Vineland, N. J.. by mail, a lit¬ 
tle bundle of seedling elms about six inches long. 
They were one or two years old, from seed taken 
from the ground in the leaf mold, where they fell 
from the tree, the mold and all being sent, without 
disturbing the roots any more than necessary. They 
were carefully set out in Vineland, N. J., and not 
.1 Fim Yen' Jersey Elm Tree. Fig. 29Jf 
cultivated. The elm tree shown at Fig. 294, with 
my son leaning on one of the low limbs, is one of 
these little seedling elms that was the size of a stalk 
of Timothy when set out. jon.xe. gage. 
A Fox or a Skunk 
I am in trouble again, and come to you to see if 
vou can advise uio. 1 have -been in the poultry business 
for 2.1 or 30 years, and have contended with rats and 
lice without loss, but now something has dug under my 
henhouses and eaten through n cement floor, and caught. 
<-ne of iny hens by the legs. It tried to drug her through 
a hole, and gnawed her foot ; one toe all off when I 
discovered her in the morning. Some say a weasel, hut 
the dirt is dug out in several places almost, as muob as 
would be 'n.v a woodchuck hole. A rat could not do such 
work. There is no odor, so it cannot, be a skunk. I 
hevo three colony houses, with stones for foundation, 
with cement on top for •floor, supposedly rat-proof; had 
them two or three years with no trouble till last \\ in- 
ter. If 1 knew what it was. would have soup* idea 
What bait to use. I do not think a weasel would be 
large enough to make such a mound of dirt. In some 
places there was us touch as a peck of earth (and frozen 
at that) in front of hole. One floor is almost riddled 
with holes, so I am covering them with tin, galvanized 
iron or anything they cannot get through. The maraud¬ 
ers are making the hiding place between the stones 
under the houses I may have to break the floor all 
up and raise houses so eats can go under. I am hatching 
chickens, and am a little anxious. Would like to make 
a finish of the beast, whatever it is. A. L. n. 
Massachusetts. 
Without seeing the hole this animal makes, one 
can only guess what it is, but I think it Is either a 
skunk or a fox; and the energy displayed in break¬ 
ing through a cement floor makes it look very much 
like a fox. But a fox would not he likely to remain 
under the floor in the daytime; lie is too cunning to 
remain near the scenes of his depredations. A skunk 
might remain there, and it would not he difficult to 
catch him in a steel tray, for a skunk is very stupid 
about traps, pays litttle or no attention to "them. 
Close all the holes but one, surround that with three 
or four steel traps, and you will be likely to catch 
him. But -take the hens out of the house; the at¬ 
mosphere will be decidedly unpleasant after he is 
caught, and the house will need considerable ventila¬ 
tion afterward. 
I do not think it is a weasel; they are small, not 
natch larger in diameter than a rat, but longer in 
body. All the weasels that troubled me in 20 years 
on the farm hid in stone walls. I never knew of one 
digging tunnels. 
If it is a fox. then it is a different proposition. A 
fox can smell the iron of a trap when it is entirely 
covered with earth, as an incident on my farm shows. 
I dug n hole up in the garden, 200 ft. from my house, 
and buried a pailful of rotten eggs, dead cliicks, etc. 
The next morning they were dug out, the empty 
shells scattered around. I cleaned up the moss, and 
buried some more in the same place, then set three 
steel traps around the hole, driving the pins to which 
the chains were fastened down out of sight; then I 
sifted with a coal sifter earth all over the place, until 
r.ot a tiling, could be seen of traps or chains or pegs, 
expecting surely to have that fox in the morning. 
I looked up there every morning for three weeks; 
nothing disturbed. Then I gave it up, and took up 
the traps. Next morning the ground was covered 
with empty eggshells. That fox probably had been 
down there every night for three weeks, smelt the 
traps, and gone away. 
If your animal is a fox, there must be a place 
where he comes out. Find that and if he is in the 
habit of running in and out safely, it is possible that 
you may hide a trap so that he will get into it. 
After they have run over a place safely a number of 
times, they get careless. A neighbor once lost over 
100 pullets from a house down in his orchard. He 
found where a fox had buried a freshly killed pullet, 
came and borrowed some of my traps, set three 
around the hurled pullet so they couldn’t he seen, 
and next morning had the fox in two of the traps. 
GEORGE A. COSGROVE. 
The Molting of the Male Bird 
D OES it make any difference when the rooster 
molts? We are all advised to select the late- 
molting hens as' breeders, for this carrying the feath¬ 
ers late into the Fall is an indication of continued 
work. The early mol ter lias come to be regarded as 
a quitter. The rooster is half the flock, and some¬ 
times more, for it seems to be admitted that (he su¬ 
perior laying hen passes along her good qualities 
through lier sons rather than through her daugh¬ 
ters. Since late molting is one of the “good signs,” 
will not the rooster pass it on? «We have presented 
this suggestion to some of the poultry experts, but 
most of them seem inclined to side-step on it. Very 
few seem to have paid any attention to it. 
Uluis. S. tJreene gives this explanation: 
“The explanation is that the time of molting with 
a hen is controlled largely by her production of eggs 
and her physical condition, while a male, being a 
non-producer, would molt at the proper time and 
when in the proper condition; therefore the time of 
this molt would have practically nothing to do with 
liis value as a breeder. I have noticed when keeping 
over a lot of males they usually molt about the same 
time, 
“i believe that in selecting a male the best guide 
is, first, individual excellence, and second, a good 
pedigree, tracing back to known, high producers at 
least four generations.” 
Prof. O. B. Kent of Cornell says: 
“As far as our observations show, there is very 
little difference between the time of molting of a 
good male and a poor male. One set of observations 
show that there was no difference between them. If 
any difference, it was in favor of the poor male 
molting late. Since then, however. I have noticed a 
considerable number of cases where our low line 
birds have molted at least a month earlier than our 
birds that were bred for high egg production. In 
general, 1 doubt if the difference between time of 
molting is anywhere near as important or as evi¬ 
dent as (lie body characters indicating good and poor 
production.” 
•Prof. Hervey of the New Jersey College thinks 
there may be something in the idea: 
“There are two factors governing molting—feed 
and heredity. Restriction of feed or an improper 
diet may cause a shedding of feathers and so cause 
a rather heavy flock culling early in the Summer. 
In other words, the better a flock is fed, the longer 
production will hold up. 
“It is believed by a great many that molting is 
an hereditary character, just like any other charac¬ 
ter, such as a barred feather, bay eye. or a single 
comb; moreover, it is believed that early molting is 
dominant of late molting. In other words, if a male 
bird that Inis a tendency to molt early is mated with 
hens that molt late In the season, the majority of the 
offspring may be early molters. Unfortunately, this 
matter has not been checked, up on the male bird to 
any great extent, because experimental work along 
