The age-herald., 1900-01-03
A woMAN's TURKEY FARM
Miss Martin Says She Can Make S2,5OO a
 Year Out of Her Fowls

''I made $2,5OO last year raising turkeys" said Miss Anita Martin, young woman who is known in Texas, her native state, as the Turkey Queen.
 Because live in Texas, however, you must not call my place turkey ranch. It is simply we'll conducted farm and other things are raised besides turkeys Indeed, until five years ago we didn't raise our own turkeys even for Thanksgiving and Christ mas.
 1T began with five hens and a gobbler. You know, I suppose, that a turkey hen almost invariably lays thirteen eggs before she begins to set. and also that she lays two filters of eggs a year. We'll, that first year, of the 125 eggs set in the spring all matched excepting five. and I raised 113 birds.
 Tn the autumn, when my hens laid again followed my original plan of buying extra eggs, but was neither so successful In the matching nor the raising. bringing up only seventy nine. Yet, seventy-nine and IT. make, 1s6. so. when1 tell you that I sold those turkeys at an average price of CT cents. you will see that had a snug sum for my trouble. As tffat was my first year the food had, cost me personally nothing My father told me at the beginning to go ahead and raise all the turkeys I wished to.
 However, when the second year began. although I started out with the same SIX birds, determined to put myself on a business basis with the rest of my family, so I used a large part of my earnings of the year before in buying food as we'll as building fowl houses and yards. Then I followed the plan of the previous. season in every particular excepting that. I added five Brahma chickens-hens, of couse-to my flock. These set on turkey eggs about the same time that 1 did my turkeys and when they matched out I gave all the little ones to the chicken hens to mother and turned the turkey hen into the pasture to lay another litter of eggs. This they will generally do in the spning when not allowed to raise the first brood. That spring | raised 209 turkeys and in the autumn 234 more. This time did not sell all Instead I increased my flock to fifty
 Prom that flock of fifty I sold 1,400, after increasing my flock to 100 and furnishing the table with as many turkeys as the fam lily cared to eat.
 "Of course my methods have changed very much since the flock has increased from five to 100 stock birds. l no longer use hens to hatch the eggs, but incubators. I buy the food by the quantity and plant acres and acres of small grain to give them green food l plant whole fields of shallots and peppers as well as corn and l employ two women and several boys to attend to them, yet in spite of all these expenses, last year 1 cleared more than $2500-
 'The greatest trouble about raising tur- keys is with dews and rains when they are young. Young turkeys should be housed at night in house or covered yard and not allowed to run into wet grass. As food for the birds use bread of unsifted, unsaltedf corn meal, Into which a good quantity of red pepper is mixed. As green food for them until they are old enough to look out for themselves I feed them the tender tops of shallots, chopped fine. After they pass their fourth month l treat them pretty much as sheep, feeding them twice a day, morning and night.
 My birds meet with ready sale and all ways fetch good prices. take orders for birds fattened on fancy foods, such as nuts. etc. which are supposed to flavor the flesh and of course these turkeys bring high prices. see no reason why other women should not succeed in the work, and would be only too glad to give all the assistance in my power to them.