TURKEYS IN CONFINEMENT.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 143, 12 June 1903, Page 2

TURKEYS IN CONFINEMENT.

Plenty of range to forage for themselves, cheap food, the climate, and easily giver* attention, make favorable conditions for raising turkeys in the country, when crows, hawks, owls are not too abundant. Crows, when the turkeys are small, are most destructive. They will come in flocks sometimes, and while some engage the attention of the old turkey, others will sneak up and take off a young turkey. Last year I circumvented the crafty crow by having all of my turkeys sit and hatch at the same time. When I turned them out I tied a red flanrlel flag to tha wing shoulder of each old turkey. Such a formidable and unusual array kept away all crows and other depredators for the first time in my experience. ' — Turkeys cannot endure close quarters and confinement after they are ;. the size of two-months-old chickens, and if they cannot safely be allowed to sleep out in the trees, or upon high perches in the yard, their house should be high and roomy, with high roosts, covered tight and weather boarded on the cold side, but thoroughly ventilated by three-inch-wide slats, put half an inch apart, on the west, south and east sides, admitting light andair, which they require more than ' other fowls. There should be snug sheds oh each side of. tbe house, divided into compartments for the laying and sitting turkeys, about 4x4 feet and five feet high, with an entrance to each from the inside for the laying turkeys, and one.from .the outside to each for the mother and the young turkeys when hatched. Underneath the roosts thegy should be an apron' or. platform w tight, smooth ' jplank, inclined at air angle of 45 degcees to the back of the house, where an aperture should be made to enable the droppings to roll out into a covered box on the outside of the house, where they can, by the addition of leaf mold or gypsum, be manipulated into a valuable fertilizer. The house by this means will be kept healthful for the turkeys and clean for the attendants. Feed eggs, bread or milk curd for the first-week to the yoking turkeys; a little black pepper or peppergrass in their bread after that, until they can eat wheat and small corn. Get them up out of storms and at night, and keep them up until' the dew is off in Dll«? morning-, and. ••w»*olx ttem wten' you can during the day, to see that nothing is interfering with them.