The following is a copy of a letter recently received by me, and which represents the type of communications I have received daily for over three years from all parts of the country:
My dear Miss Mahaney:—
Altho we are strangers to each other, I am writing you today, regarding turkey raising. I read some time ago in the “Boston Post” that you had good success in raising turkeys, so I take the liberty of writing you for instructions, if you will kindly give them to me. I have tried for several years to raise a few, but it has been a hard job. They would do well for about six or seven weeks, then grow sick with liver and bowel trouble and fade away. Now what is the trouble? What must they be fed with? Must they range or be kept in a yard? In fact, what way must I manage to raise turkeys? What is your experience? Please write me.
Sincerely,
etc.
It is in answer to such letters as the foregoing that I am placing my methods in book form on the market, in order to enlighten the breeders of turkeys and to inform them how I first succeeded where others have failed.
In the first place, I visited two or three farms in the country. I found that no care whatever was taken of the turkeys. A common hen was fairly well looked after, fed and kept warm. The turkey was supposed to forage for itself, roost on old wagons or any sort of roost that the bird found convenient, at night and in all kinds of weather. Conditions were anything but sanitary. Inbreeding was permitted year after year, as one tom was thought sufficient for the hen turkeys of five or six neighbors.
I visited one farm in particular, which had on it turkeys from very nice stock, about twenty in all. Of course they were small and pale, and had not developed as they should have. They roosted in a sort of shed right off the barn cellar, so that they had access to the barn cellar, and they roamed around on the manure pile all day. The manure was turned down through an opening under the cows. The roof of that shed had no shingles on it, and in wet weather the rain simply poured down on those birds. It is only natural that conditions such as these will bring on roup and all kinds of diseases. The birds will not be developed and cannot possibly be strong enough when the spring comes to fulfill the duties of the breeding season.
Birds hatched amid such surroundings are tainted with roup and other afflictions.
It is not very long ago since I had a talk with a gentleman from Vermont. He told me that at one time Vermont made a large amount of money in turkey raising. When the turkeys got to be four or five weeks old, the raisers simply turned them out, and let them take care of themselves. Those that lived through the summer, weathered storms and all other sorts of hardships, they rounded up in the fall, fattened for market or sold for breeders. This was what they called “clear profit.” Everyone can readily understand to what that “clear profit” has led.