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Show FOOD FOR YOUNG TURKEYS. One of the most successful turkey-raisers that I know of robs the pigs to give sour and skimmed milk to his turkeys through the summer. He has a long trough, into which the milk is poured every morning, and the turkeys have all they can drink. There is generally enough left in the trough to entice them back from their rambles at an early hour to the roost. He frequently raises two hundred turkeys in a season, and never has a failure of the crop. Indian corn is the best food for the half-grown and adult birds, and they never seem to get tired of it. All kinds of grain are keenly relished, and it is well to give an occasional feed of oats, buckwheat, wheat or barley, for change of diet. As the fattening season approaches, along in October, many farmers feed with a mixture of boiled potatoes and Indian meal, or oats and corn ground together. This is given warm every morning, and where pigs are fed it is a very convenient preparation. But there is probably nothing more economical than corn, as the staple food through the year. Young turkeys should not be fed after five o'clock in the afternoon. Instinct does not teach them to feed at night. If they have a good range in summer, they will return from their rambles with their crops full of insects, and all they want is a safe roost, and time to digest what they have eaten. Any kind of cheap animal food, given occasionally, will help their growth in seasons or places where insects are not abundant. One of the cheapest of these is boiled beef scraps, or mutton scraps, from the butcher's. This comes in cakes, and costs about a cent a pound. Fruit and vegetables, cooked or raw, are wholesome diet and easily procured, and make a good change of food. A valuable outfit [?] in raising turkeys is a bed of cracked oyster shells, or clam shells, where the birds can help themselves, which will be often. If you put a barrel or two in the road, the hoofs of horses and the wheels of vehicles will do the crushing without cost. - W. Cliff, in Country Gentleman. |