Quits Cattle for Turkeys.
Herding turkeys is a new way of making a living discovered by J. W. Abrams, of Springfield, Colorado. Abrams herds nearly a thousand turkeys through the Colorado alfalfa fields every year, letting the birds feed on grasshoppers. Two especially trained collie dogs assist in the work of herding. The ranchers are glad to have the pests which destroy their crops eaten from the fields, so Abrams and his outfit are welcome wherever they go.
An old cow pony, with a slicker, a shelter tent, and a cooking outfit packed on his back; two beautifully marked collies, and a thousand bronze turkeys, strutting and gobbling, make up the outfit. Abrams always herds within reaching distance of a stream, so his charges can get plenty of water.
When the turkey herder sold his flock last year at Thanksgiving time, the $2,450 he received was almost clear profit. Abrams had 980 birds, averaging ten pounds apiece. He topped the market with his grasshopper-fed turkeys, receiving twenty-five cents a pound on the lot.
The only expense the birds had been to him was for oil to run his incubators, feed during the first six weeks of their lives, when they were too small to herd, rent on the ten-acre place where they were hatched, and the cost of raising a small field of spelt in which they ran to fatten after the fall frosts had killed the grasshoppers. Some turkey hens which he kept through the winter laid the eggs he set in the incubators.
“It isn’t difficult to teach young turkeys to let dogs herd them,” Abrams said. “They are rather timid at first. But Jeff and Mutt, here, have been trained never to frighten the birds. You’ll notice they never bark at them, just growl a little and pretend to snap at their legs when they don’t behave. Turkeys are stupid birds, you know. Every flock has a leader, who walks ahead. The others follow him blindly. I always keep an old gobbler from the year before for a leader. He is used to the dogs, and Jeff and Mutt manage the flock by guiding him.[Pg 58]”
The real work of the two dogs begins at dusk, when they herd the turkeys to the nearest shelter and keep them there until they settle for the night. When their master has cooked and eaten his supper and has rolled up in his blankets for his night’s sleep, it is their duty to guard the flock from wandering skunks, stray coyotes, cats, and other animals who are fond of young turkey. By dawn the old gobbler is stirring, eager for a breakfast of bugs and grasshoppers.
Abrams was a cowboy before he started herding turkeys, about five years ago.
“The range was all fenced in Colorado,” he said, “and it was up to me to find some other job besides running cattle.”