ABOUT SITTING.
For an ordinary place, select from a good breed (I prefer the bronze) a large gobbler and two or three hens. As soon as the warm weather comes, place about the barn in sheltered places two or three barrels on their sides, and in them make nice nests. In these the hens will lay. Gather the eggs every day, keeping them in a cool place. When a box contains 23 eggs mark it No. 1 and begin to fill a second box, and when it contains 23 eggs mark it No. 2 and so continue. It is well to leave turkey hens on the nest two or three days, for they often lay one or two eggs after they begin to show signs of sitting.
When you have decided to sit a hen, give her a good nest and 15 eggs and at the same time give a common hen eight eggs. These, when hatched, are all to be given to the turkey hen. Never try to raise turkeys with a domestic fowl. If you have no place free of grass, you can start turkeys with difficulty. Feeding is of the greatest importance. For the first week I have found wheat bread moistened in water the most satisfactory. If you can feed them by sunrise for the first three or four weeks, you need lose hardly a bird. Each evening try and call them nearer and nearer home, so that you will not be troubled with their wandering to the neighbors'. As early as possible train them to roost high, so as to be out of danger at night. Bird dogs are often very destructive to turkeys, at times destroying a whole flock in a single night. Fatten with corn. The turkey crop ought to be one of the most profitable on our farms.
Dr. G.G. Groff.
Pennsylvania.
GRAHAM.
Turkeys want care, especially for the first two or three weeks. I feed graham and wheat bread, made by scalding the flour, making a very stiff dough, and baking in a hot oven; soak over night in cold water. I also give them plenty of young onions, cutting them up with scissors. Be careful not to let young turkeys out in the morning while the grass is wet. After the birds are two weeks old I feed wheat, but no corn until they are about a month old. I like hen mothers best, for turkey mothers are rangers, and do not take kindly to being kept in a coop. The bread will keep a week if made right, but do not soak more than will be wanted in a day, as it soon sours. I feed scraps from the table, such as potatoes and bits of meat cut very fine, but not much of the latter to young birds. I rarely lose a bird.—Mrs. E. Reith, in Homestead.
CARE AND GENERAL MANAGEMENT.
In turkey raising the one who is the most careful and attentive to the small things is the most successful. The first laying of eggs should be set under a chicken hen. The turkey hen will, after a few days' confinement, lay another batch of eggs. A good-sized hen will cover and care for ten eggs; a turkey hen, seventeen. Make a large, roomy nest of soft, fine hay—straw is too brittle and slippery. If there is danger of lice in the nest-box, sprinkle with water in which carbolic acid has been mixed in the proportion of eight drops to a half gallon of water. Don't wet the eggs with this. After the eggs have been sat on one week, sprinkle with warm water every other day, until the last week; then every day, until they hatch. Have the water clear, and use a flower or fine rose sprinkler. Let the water be of the same temperature as the eggs, which can be ascertained by slipping a thermometer under the hen for a few minutes. This softens the shells, and as a little turkey is very weak, it is helped out easily, and is stronger than if working long to get out.
Let the little turkeys get well dried and strong enough to climb around the edges of their nest before taking them off. Have a pen, say six feet square, built for them, and made tight at the sides clear down to the ground, to keep them from getting out and being chilled. Put sand and fine gravel over the ground, and cover enough of it to afford shelter at night and when it rains. They may be kept in this pen the first four or five days, then let out after dew is off, and shut up before night.