My dear Readers:—

The following is a copy of a letter recently received by me, and which represents the type of communications I have received daily for over three years from all parts of the country:

My dear Miss Mahaney:—

Altho we are strangers to each other, I am writing you today, regarding turkey raising. I read some time ago in the “Boston Post” that you had good success in raising turkeys, so I take the liberty of writing you for instructions, if you will kindly give them to me. I have tried for several years to raise a few, but it has been a hard job. They would do well for about six or seven weeks, then grow sick with liver and bowel trouble and fade away. Now what is the trouble? What must they be fed with? Must they range or be kept in a yard? In fact, what way must I manage to raise turkeys? What is your experience? Please write me.

It is in answer to such letters as the foregoing that I am placing my methods in book form on the market, in order to enlighten the breeders of turkeys and to inform them how I first succeeded where others have failed.

In the first place, I visited two or three farms in the country. I found that no care whatever was taken of the turkeys. A common hen was fairly well looked after, fed and kept warm. The turkey was supposed to forage for itself, roost on old wagons or any sort of roost that the bird found convenient, at night and in all kinds of weather. Conditions were anything but sanitary. Inbreeding was permitted year after year, as one tom was thought sufficient for the hen turkeys of five or six neighbors.

I visited one farm in particular, which had on it turkeys from very nice stock, about twenty in all. Of course they were small and pale, and had not developed as they should have. They roosted in a sort of shed right off the barn cellar, so that they had access to the barn cellar, and they roamed around on the manure pile all day. The manure was turned down through an opening under the cows. The roof of that shed had no shingles on it, and in wet weather the rain simply poured down on those birds. It is only natural that conditions such as these will bring on roup and all kinds of diseases. The birds will not be developed and cannot possibly be strong enough when the spring comes to fulfill the duties of the breeding season.

Birds hatched amid such surroundings are tainted with roup and other afflictions.

It is not very long ago since I had a talk with a gentleman from Vermont. He told me that at one time Vermont made a large amount of money in turkey raising. When the turkeys got to be four or five weeks old, the raisers simply turned them out, and let them take care of themselves. Those that lived through the summer, weathered storms and all other sorts of hardships, they rounded up in the fall, fattened for market or sold for breeders. This was what they called “clear profit.” Everyone can readily understand to what that “clear profit” has led.

The result is that our splendid bronze turkeys are dying out by the thousands each year, and within seven or eight more years, if something is not done to strengthen the turkey and keep it up to the standard of at least the common hen, our famous turkey of America will be a thing of the past. Whereas, if the turkey when hatched is given good feed as described in another part of my book, taken care of until the red is thrown, and then turned into a good, warm shed at night, kept dry and warm in damp weather, and fed reasonably, three-thirds of the trouble in raising turkeys can be avoided.

Care must be given to the breeding hens. They must be kept in sanitary quarters, given plenty of good feed, with four drops of tincture of iron to a gallon of water, plenty of lime and sand, about half and half, and left where they can eat it at their own convenience. If you give ground bone, have it very fine, for it is apt to lodge in the corner of the mouth and sometimes will cause ulceration. When this happens, the jowl of the bird will become swollen, and on close examination, there will be found a small piece of white bone which will have to be removed and the mouth washed with sulpho-napthol or Presto Disinfectant. I generally use my salve two or three times before the wound is healed. If the bird that lays the eggs is good and strong, the turkeys that are hatched will be strong and rugged, and to “keep them growing from the start” has always been my motto.

In my closing paragraph I wish to say to all my readers that I have been most sincere and straightforward in everything that I have written in this book. To one and all who may read this, I extend a cordial invitation to visit my turkey farm in Concord, Massachusetts, that you may see for yourselves the progress I have made in the last eight years in raising turkeys in yards under the same conditions as chickens, a feat which has been claimed heretofore by experiment stations to be impossible to accomplish, in poultry-congested New England.

I have labored with the problem of turkey raising for many years, and sincerely believe myself to be in a position to advise others who may be beginners, as I once was, concerning the difficulties of turkey raising, and the best method of overcoming them.