The tame animal has the same habits, gobbling and strutting in the same way. Cared for and fed for the market, it grows to be a large and fat bird, with plenty of rich, juicy meat upon its bones. It is its size and the sweetness and delicacy of its flesh which make it a feast-day favorite.
The turkey is fond of roaming about and does not like to be confined to the poultry yard. On a large farm, where there is plenty of room to wander, the bird will do well and find most of its own food. But the young birds are delicate and hard to raise and it takes great care to bring them alive through babyhood. The hot sun hurts them and so do rain-storms and it is bad for them to get wet by running through long grass. If they are carefully attended to for their first few weeks of life and fed on food fitted to their young tastes they can be trusted afterwards to take good care of themselves.
While this bird has long been one of the prized tenants of our home poultry yards, the same is the case in Europe. There is a Mexican variety, with a whitish tail, which was taken to Europe by the early Spaniards and has spread widely in that continent, where it is raised with great care.
There are few large farms in America and Europe on which these birds are not kept—not in large numbers like the hen, for they do not take kindly to home life and need much room to wander, but enough for the demand. They are first-class hatchers, and will sit on from twenty to twenty-four eggs. They also take very good care of their flocks and guard them from harm.
The turkey, as we all know, is a large bird. It may be had of many sizes for the Christmas table, from ten or twelve pounds up to twenty-five or thirty. While much attention is paid to it in this country, it perhaps gets still more in Europe. In our cities it is a sad case when a family cannot have a roast turkey for its Christmas dinner, and in England it is taking the place of the roast goose, once the favorite. But the goose still holds a pleasant corner in the British mind. Any of you who have read Dickens's story of Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit's Christmas dinner will be sure of this.
It is a queer fact that, while the turkey is the only American bird on our farms, it is at the same time the only one that has been given an old world name. It was early named after the Turks, under a wrong impression as to its origin, and the name has clung to it. It is quite as strange that the same must be said of the natives of America, who were given the name of Indians from the idea of Columbus that it was the land of India he had found. This name has also clung.
France is a country well suited to the raising of turkeys, and for hundreds of years the turkey has been a favorite bird in that land. Splendid birds are grown there, chief among them being the Solonge turkey. This is a bird of a brilliant black color, though now and then it is of white or steel-blue. They grow to be very large, one having been sent to the poultry shows of 1902 of the great weight of forty-five pounds.
This was sent to Spain to be seen and was visited in Madrid by the king and queen. On its return it took cold and when it got well of this it was killed by a fellow who did not believe in fat turkeys. The turkey was revenged, for the murderer spent five months in prison for his crime.
In some of the villages of France a woman is paid at the public cost as a care-keeper of the turkeys. Every morning she gathers her flock in the village and leads them to the open fields like the goose girl of Russia. When she comes home at night with her flock she does not need to pick out those of the different owners. Every bird knows its home and goes there, never making a mistake.
