Breeding.
Those intended for breeders should be compact, vigorous, and large, without being long-legged. They should be daily, yet lightly fed through the winter, on grain and roots, and some animal food is always acceptable and beneficial to them. They are small eaters, and without caution will soon get too fat. One vigorous male will suffice for a flock of 10 or 12 hens, and a single connection is sufficient for each. They begin to lay on the approach of warm weather, laying once a day, or every other day, till they have completed their litter; which in the young or indifferently fed, may be 10 or 12, and
in the older ones, sometimes reaches 20. The hen is sly in secreting her nest, but usually selects a dry, well-protected place. She is an inveterate setter, and carefully hatches most of her eggs.
The young may be allowed to remain for 24 hours without eating, then fed with hard-boiled eggs made fine, or crumbs of wheat bread. Boiled milk, curds, and buttermilk afford an excellent food. As they get stronger, oat or barley-meal is suitable, but Indian-meal, uncooked, is hurtful to them when quite young. They are very tender, and will bear neither cold nor wet, and it is of course necessary to confine the old one for the first few weeks. When able to shift for themselves, they may wander over the fields at pleasure; and from their great fondness for insects, they will rid the meadows of innumerable grasshoppers, bugs, and beetles, which often do incalculable damage to the farmer. Early chickens are sufficiently grown to fatten the latter part of autumn or the beginning of winter, which is easily done on any of the grains or boiled roots. Both are better for being cooked. They require a higher roosting-place than hens, and are impatient of too close confinement, preferring the ridge of a barn, or a lofty tree, to the circumscribed limits of the ordinary poultry-house. When rightly managed and fed, turkeys are subject to few maladies; and even these, careful attention will soon remove.