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.

GATHER THE LITTLE TURKEYS IN

at the first signs of rain, and they will soon learn to run and fly to their coop at the first drops.  Always shut them up at night, for they are early risers and will be out long before the dew is dried off.  Don’t pen them too near the house.  Feed them at or near the same place all the time and they will learn to go there when hungry.  Give them a good feed at night and they will remember to come home for it.  If the morning is dry, feed lightly and let them hunt the rest in the orchard and fields.