The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1882-05-11
Care of Young Turkeys.

Let young turkeys alone in the nest
until they are twenty-fOur hours old;
they do not need food within that time
and handling only inim2S them. When
they are strong on their Sect and begin
to run out from under the hen in search
of food, remove the mother hen and the
little turks to Il clean, dry coop, which
should have board floor covered with
sand or gravel. This coop should also
have a pen around it.
The first food given to young tur-
keys should be hard-bOiled eggs, crum-
bled fine. curds and stale bread crumbs
moistened with milk. To prepare the
curds, set a kettle or pan of sour milk
on the back of the stove where it will
warm gradually, but do not allow it to
get scalding hot, as scalding makes the
curds tough and stringy; when the
whey rises pour the contents of the pan
into a bag of strainer cloth, or into a
strainer of some kind, and let the whey
drain off. For the first two weeks feed
nothing except the boiled eggs, curds
and bread crumbs, with all the milk,
sweet or sour, that they will drink.
The third week commence feeding
cooked corn meal. Mix the meal into
a stiff dough with water and bake for
an hour or more according to the size
of the loaf. The outside crust OF this
bread may be mOistened with milk or
water but the inside should Just be
crumbled up. 1t is some work to bake
bread, cook eggs, prepare curds, etc,
for large flock of young turkeys, but
we are fully convinced that it pays.
Young turkeys will not thrive on I'M
cooked food, or on wet sloppy food,
and the sooner farmers find it out the
better for the turkeys. Feeding young
turkeys raw meal before they are fully
feathered and have thrown out the red
on their heads, is pretty certain to upset
their digestive ORGANS, and when a
young turks stomach is out of order
he might as we'll be dead. Feed young
turkeys often, five or six times a day
until they are three months old. If you
expect fine large birds for Thanksgiving
you must keep them growing right
straight along; full feed for the first
three months will make a decided diff
ference in the weight of the bird when
market day comes. When they are three
months old feed cracked corn, wheat,
oats, wheat screenings, etc, but no
whole corn until cold weather. After
the third month turkeys will, if insects
are plenty, thrive on two meals a day
until frost; but if you can only scare up
one grasshOpper and two potato bugs
on forty acre lot, you had better give
an extra meal in the middle of the day.
Before they are fully feathered and have
thrown out the red, turkeys are tender
and extremely liable to die of chills and
cramps caused by exposure to heavy
dews and cold rains; tramping around in
the grass when it was wet with dew has
killed more Young turkeys than any
thing else, except improper food. For
the first two or three days cOniine the
young turkeys to the coop and pen; then
when the weather is pleasant let them
out to roam at will after the dew is off.
A hen mother will ALWAYS bring her
brood home at night, but you can't al
ways trust a turkey mother; nine times
in ten she will squat down just where
night overtakes her, and if you dom
hunt her up and drive her home, she will
get up the next morning as soon as she
can see a streak of daylight and wander
around in the wet grass until she kills
half her brOod-sO when your turkey
mother dom return to the coop at night
you must drive or coax her in. If by
any chance any of the little turks get wet
and chilled, don t give them up until you
are sure they are dead. Take them to
the house and thoroughly warm and dry
them; then give warm food well-sea-
soned with pepper. The writer has
warmed over chilled turkeys that ex-
hibited no signs of life when taken to
the house. At one time we had seven
teen that were caught out in a shower,
and that the hired man pronounced very
dead when he brought them in; we
spread piece of folded quilt over the
bottom of the stove oven, spread on the
wet turkeys, covered them over with a
piece of old flannel and waited; but we
didn't wait long. In about fifteen min
utes there was a commotion under that
blanket and the little turkeys began to
hop out on the floor rs lively as crickets,
and in about two hours the whole lot
were as good As new.
After young turkeys have thrown out
the red they become quite hardy. and
NAV be given free range, but it is a
rood plan to teach them to come home
to roost: if fed regularly every night
they viii soon learn to come home for
their supper, and when few chickens
are raised in the same brood with tur-
keys, chickens and turkeys will all 90 to
roOst in the same place
BY following the advice here given
any one can raise nine-tenths of all the
turkeys hatched.-Prairie Farmer.