A FLOCK OF TURKEYS
There are six varieties of turkeys: Bronze, White Holland, Bourbon Reds, black, buff, slate and Narragansett. But the three first are the ones most worth raising specially for market, as they are large birds and the most popular varieties. So it is easy to get good stock, to start with, which is of paramount importance.
A trio of any one of the three varieties will cost from fifteen to twenty dollars, and if only twenty birds are reared the first year for market, they will bring at least sixty dollars. That is placing the average weight at twelve pounds and price twenty-five cents a pound. This is, however, absurd, when you consider that young toms weigh twenty pounds and pullets fifteen, feed could not possibly cost more than ten dollars, which would leave thirty dollars’ profit the first year.
A successful turkey-raiser told me he had kept his birds in yards for twelve years, so I felt safe in adopting the plan. I suppose I ought to have said inclosures, for they covered about half an acre each. The land was shaly, with a rocky background, but there were plenty of clumps of scrub brush and ferns, from the rocks to the top of the two acres they used. The ground sloped to the south; a spot of no earthly good for any other purpose, but perfectly ideal for turkeys.
However, as our farm had no such place, I utilised a strip of poor brush land which had good natural drainage and made three inclosures, each one hundred feet wide and three hundred feet long. An open-front shed twelve feet long and ten feet wide was built in each. They were just rough shelters built out of slabs and the only fittings were perches made out of sassafras poles, none of them less than nine inches in circumference. This is one of the important items in fixing a place for turkeys. Being heavy, large-footed birds, they are uncomfortable and positively suffer if condemned to balance themselves on slight perches such as chickens use.
It took four loads of slabs to make the three sheds, and they cost seventy-five cents a load at the sawmill. Wire netting cost forty-eight dollars, perches and posts were cut in our own woods, and the home help did the work.
I got ten female birds from the Massachusetts farm for fifty dollars and two toms from Long Island for twenty dollars. We sent for the birds early in December so that they should have time to get thoroughly at home in their new quarters before the laying season. Before they arrived, the front of the sheds was covered with wire netting, so that we could keep them shut up at first, but after two or three weeks it was removed and they were allowed the range of the yards. The wire around the inclosure was only four feet high and one wing of each bird was cut to prevent them flying over it.
A FLOCK OF TURKEYS