HOW TO RAISE TURKEYS.
Keep the turkey hens tame by feeding them close to the house. Have two or three barrels in sheltered corners containing plenty of straw or leaves for them to lay in. Gather the eggs every evening, as turkey eggs are very easily chilled. Keep the eggs in a woolen cloth on end and turn them every three days. Set the first seven eggs under a chicken hen, as they get too old before the turkey hen will go to sitting. Make a board pen ten or twelve feet square and twelve or fourteen inches high. Put a coop in it and put your hen and turkeys in it. Feed the hen with corn and the turkeys soaked wheat bread (corn meal will kill them), until they are a week old (I feed five or six times a day). Then feed wheat until they are big enough to eat corn. Give plenty of fresh water in a shallow vessel. Keep the mother in the pen until they are large enough to fly over the top of the boards. Let them out awhile about the middle of the day. Shut them in at night. A turkey hen does not like to be shut up, but have a good big coop for her and she will go in. Don't let the little turkeys get their backs wet until they are feathered. The turkey hen will sit down when night comes just where she happens to be, but if you drive her home a few times she will come herself after that. Always feed them when they come home, no matter if they are full of "hoppers." Have your No. 2 pen in the orchard under an apple tree where it is shady. Have the turkey hen's pen close to the chicken hen's pen, so that when the chicken hen weans her turkeys, they will soon learn to go with the turkey hen. Give them a dose of black pepper in their feed every cold rain. And never, no never, get excited and in a hurry while working with turkeys if you don't want them to get wild and fly all over the plantation. Three or four weeks before selling, feed all the corn they will eat.