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.
For the first few days' feed, nothing is better than clabber cheese or
curd made by scalding clabbered milk until the curd separates and is
cooked, then skimmed out and fed. Mix a little black pepper with this
every other day. Meal must not be fed raw for several weeks, and then
should be mixed with sour milk instead of water. Bake the meal into
bread by mixing it, unsifted, with sour milk, and adding a little soda
and pepper. Spinach, lettuce, onion tops and any other tender greens,
chopped fine, are excellent food. From the time a turkey is hatched
until it is ready for market it should have plenty of milk. Give them
clear water to drink, for milk is a food. See that the very young ones
have milk and water in quite shallow dishes, for they are in danger of
getting wet if the dish is deep.