7ht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1201 
The Henyard 
Feeding Young Turkeys 
Will yon give me the proper way to 
fwl young turkeys? I have hatched 
('ight turkeys out. of 10 eggs, and expect 
a lot more to hatch out soon. How soon 
can I give grain, and what about dry 
mash? We give our chickens dry mash 
after they are a week old. Is sweet or 
Hour milk better for them? I also give 
them hard-boiled eggs. Should I feed 
green right away? J. A. 
The best method of feeding young tur¬ 
keys is a matter not generally agreed 
upon. Nearly every turkey raiser has his 
or her own ideas upon the subject, and 
no one’s methods have met with sufficient¬ 
ly universal acceptance to be described 
as standard. Those who seem to have 
exceptional success do not appear to be 
able to transmit their skill to others, and 
certainly no one has yet taught any 
method by which that great scourge of 
poultry-raising, .blackhead, may be con¬ 
trolled. There is considerable reason to 
believe that success in turkey-raising is 
still largely a matter of luck—a fortunate 
combination of circumstances -which en¬ 
ables a flock to avoid the organism caus¬ 
ing blackhead or to overcome it by su¬ 
perior resistive powers. 
It is generally agreed, however, that 
over-feeding is more disastrous to young 
poults than to chicks, and that it should 
be guarded against with correspondingly 
greyer care. The old rule of giving all 
that will be readily cleaned up at a feed¬ 
ing should be modified here, and prob¬ 
ably not more than one-third or one-half 
of that amount should be given. This 
necessitates much more frequent feeding 
than would otherwise be necessary, of 
course, but it guards against that exces¬ 
sive fullness of the digestive organs 
which, in poults, appears to predispose to 
blackhead. Scant and frequent feeding 
of the poults will help them more than 
will the giving of any one particular kind 
of food. 
Crackers do not seem to me proper 
food for either poults or chicks; in fact. 
I believe them to be one of the poorest 
substitutes for wholesome food for hu¬ 
mans. Milk, however, has no equal as a 
food for young animals, and the fact that 
nature has not provided it for the feath¬ 
ered tribes does not seem to militate 
against its usefulness. It will puzzle 
those who teach that only nature’s meth¬ 
ods should be followed to explain the 
value of milk to chicks or poults, but 
those who have bad long experience in 
feeding it know that it promotes growth 
and vigor under feathers jas well as be¬ 
neath fur. Clabbered milk is usually 
recommended for young turkeys, but J 
know of no evidence that sweet milk is 
not equally valuable. The latter will 
not remain unclabbered long after being 
swallowed. Milk in some form may well 
be given from hatching time until Thanks¬ 
giving. and there need be no fear .of over¬ 
feeding upon it. 
There is one other food also that shares 
with milk the distinction of being safe 
in any quantity that will be eaten ; this 
is green stuff. Some way, you can’t stuff 
to do harm with green stuff. The tender 
leaves of all growing vegetables, from 
lettuce to burdocks, should be fed ad lib., 
which means very liberally, and probably 
the onlv advantage which the former has 
over the latter is the tenderness of leaf, 
which makes it unnecessary to cut "it into 
bits to enable the young bird to swallow 
it. It is surprising what a variety of 
herbs the young feathered animals 'will 
thrive upon if given an opportunity. 
When it comes to grain, however, there 
is need for care, particularly when that 
grain is ground fine and made easy to 
till up upon. Nature didn’t grind grain 
for either chicks or poults, and the fact 
that, she supplied these animals with their 
own mills makes it seem reasonable to 
suppose _ that it would be well to give 
them a job. Any one of the grains com¬ 
monly fed chickens are suited to young 
turkeys. They should he finely cracked 
for the newly hatched and very young 
and fed in larger bits when the birds have 
become older. Corn, wheat and pinhead 
oatmeal or rolled oats will supply the 
need for grain. A mixture of cornmeal, 
wheat bran, middlings and beef scrap may 
be fed as a mash. ITcre is a mash recom¬ 
mended by the Rhole Island Experiment 
Station, to be fed after the first week : 
( ornmeal. six parts; ■wheat bran, four 
Parts; middlings, two parts; granulated 
milk, two parts, and linseed meal, one 
part. You probably won’t be able to get 
the granulated milk, and my own opinion 
is that you will raise more poults if you 
don t feed any mash at all, though, of 
course, blackhead may got them sooner or 
late in either case. Beef scrap, sifted 
for the very young poults, may replace 
'he granulated milk in the above formula. 
Any mash fed may be moistened with 
skim-milk or water, but moistened only, 
not made wet. 
When in the fields and woods young 
turkeys have to eat seeds that have not 
been cracked and never get their bugs 
and worms soaked in milk. More than 
'bat. it is a fortunate turkey that gets 
a grasshopper after less than a half-hour’s 
'•base, and if more than one grub is found 
m a rotten log, the find has to be shared 
with a lot of hungry brothers and sisters. 
Exercise and food, about three of the 
former to one of the latter, seem to be 
the lot of the turkey in its natural state, 
and we soon get into trouble when we 
attempt to reverse the above proportions. 
It is very hard to feed a mash, particu¬ 
larly a moist mash, without overdoing 
the matter, and it is well to remember 
that nature never provided a mash of any 
kind for birds. It may be recalled that 
nature never provided milk for birds, 
either, but it is human nature to quote 
nature only when her argument agrees’ I 
with our own. 
To sum up, feed nothing for the first 
48 hours, then feed whatever you do pro¬ 
vide very scantily, being liberal only with 
milk and greens. Feed several times 
daily, and^ preferably upon hard cracked 
grains. Keep the poults dry ; give them 
range with their mothers after the dew 
is off and they have become old enough 
to be turned loose with their natural care¬ 
takers, and guard against rats, foxes and 
sudden showers. Blackhead you can’t 
guard against; when some of the flock 
begin to drag behind, with drooping wings 
and that peculiar short trot that betokens 
weakness, vou may know that their days 
are numbered. Cheer no, however; they 
will not all die. and Thanksgiving may 
find you with a flock all the more valuable 
that all flocks are small. If turkeys 
were as easily raised as chickens, they 
would not now be quoted around 50 cents 
per pound, live weight. M. n. d. 
Using Eggs That “Test Clear” 
During the past season we have , had 
many articles- from poultrymen who ask 
where they can sell the clear infertile 
eggs taken from the incubator, after the 
first testing. A great many poultry be¬ 
ginners get the idea that there is a large 
demand for these eggs by bakers and 
candy-makers. We have spent some 
time in investigating this matter. Some 
of these eggs are received in the market 
here, and find a fair sale among those 
who know just what they are, hut the 
eggs must be entirely clear, and not 
mixed in with eggs that are sold as a 
fresh product. Some of the bakers tell 
us that they use reasonable -quantities 
of these eggs, and it appears to be true 
that some foreigners buy them both for 
cooking aud for regular eating purposes. 
The general advice, however, is not to 
ship them to large cities, but to try to 
find a market near home, for the shipment 
and sale of these eggs does not add to 
the reputation of the shipper, and unless 
he is a man of high character dealers 
who receive his eggs are apt to view him 
with suspicion, in case it is known that 
he is sending these clear eggs to the mar¬ 
ket. The following note from Prof. J. E. 
Rice tells the story fairly, and we have 
no doubt that many others are marketing 
the eggs in this same manner. Person¬ 
ally we think it far better to make use 
of them at home for some purpose rather 
than to try to ship them to the market. 
We do advise using the infertile eggs; 
that is to say. the eggs that show clearly 
a. the first test that there is no evidence 
of an embryo chick having started to 
develop. We not only advise it. but we 
practice it. For many years it has been 
the custom in our home to use the infer¬ 
tile eggs for cooking and for table pur¬ 
poses. The presence of the infertile egg 
in an incubator for a period of six days 
does not appear to have injured its eat¬ 
ing qualities. The danger, however, in 
recommending the sale of infertile eggs on 
the open market is that they probably 
would not keep as well under ordinary 
market conditions as eggs which have not 
been subjected to a temperature of ap¬ 
proximately 103 degrees for six days in 
incubating. 
Where the eggs can he sold for what 
they are to large consumers, such as 
bakeries and confectionery establishments 
and hotels, the eggs give excellent satis¬ 
faction, provided the Candler has been 
careful in liis work. Because of the pos¬ 
sibility of carelessness in testing, which 
might result in eggs containing dead 
germs being placed among the infertiles, 
it is desirable that this quality of stock 
be re-candled before being sold. Six days 
in the incubator frequently causes the 
vitelline membrane to become tender, so 
that, the yolk substance is more likely to 
run into the white when the egg is bro¬ 
ken, so that in actual appearance the 
eggs when broken in some instances 
might not score as the strictly fresh pro¬ 
duct. So far as the actual value of the 
eggs for borne consumption is concerned 
they are perfectly satisfactory. 
The “women folks,” who are naturally 
inclined to be discriminating in their use 
of food products, especially about those 
which are “under suspicion,” are likely 
to look with disfavor upon the use of 
infertile eggs in the home. My first ex¬ 
perience in attempting to educate our 
"women folks” in the use of infertile eggs 
was by substituting infertile eggs for the 
fresh eggs without the cook’s knowing of 
the pardonable deception by substitution 
until after the eggs bad proved entirely 
satisfactory. james e. kick. 
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NAME 
H ] 
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THE KERR CHICKERY, Box O, FRENCHTOWN^N. J 
Lion Head Poultry Farm 
Annual Sale 
English Leghorn Yearling Hens and Pedi- 
greed Cocks 
$3.50 «ach in lots of ten 
Foundation, Barron’s Coutest Pen Storrs 
1916. For results 1920 see 
Pen 81 Vineland Pen 74 Storrs 
C. Rasmussen Dover, N. J. 
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