Margaret Mahaney Talks About Turkeys

Part 1

Transcriber's Note When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has been surrounded by underscores.

Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected, including normalizing punctuation. Further corrections are listed below with the printed text (top) and corrected text (bottom):

to defect the approach of the disease to detect the approach of the disease (p. 98)

MARGARET MAHANEY

Talks About Turkeys

Price, $1.00

Margaret Mahaney

TALKS ABOUT TURKEYS

By MARGARET MAHANEY

THE SKILLFUL NEW ENGLAND RAISER TELLS US SOME OF THE SECRETS OF THE SUCCESSFUL RAISING OF TURKEYS

PUBLISHED BY

THE PARK & POLLARD CO.

BOSTON, MASS.

Copyright 1913 by THE PARK & POLLARD CO. Boston, Massachusetts

------------------------------------------------------------------------

INTRODUCTION

BY PHILIP R. PARK

More than a century and a quarter ago there was fired in Concord, Mass., a shot that was heard around the world. This shot terminated the domination of monopoly and marked the opening of a new era,—the building of a new empire.

Not less important to all lovers of turkeys is the shot fired in this same beautiful old town by Margaret Mahaney, when she first put an end to the bogy that has been hovering over the Turkey industry so long, i. e., Blackhead. Not less triumphant has been her conquest of practically all the ailments besetting this beautiful bird.

It is really beyond belief that Miss Mahaney has raised in a season 300 turkeys with a loss of less than 2 per cent, when for years the Experiment Stations and Agricultural Colleges, as well as nearly all poultrymen, have claimed that turkeys could not be raised in this State. All would recognize this as wonderful work if applied to chickens, but when accomplished with turkeys it is doubly wonderful. These same Experiment Station directors had told Miss Mahaney that she could not do the things she was already accomplishing, but when they visited her farm they held up their hands and departed, acknowledging that here was a woman who had performed the miracle.

Miss Mahaney was a wonderfully capable trained nurse who broke down at her work and was ordered to the country to save her life, urged particularly to take up some out-of-door work. Poultry keeping appealed to her from the first, but turkeys particularly for the reason of the difficulties to be surmounted. If she could do what others could not she would be satisfied. Anyone could raise chickens, but hardly anyone could raise turkeys. Here was a task that delighted her and a problem that appealed to her. The difficulties she encountered would have discouraged any one but a pioneer of her character. Her deep maternal instinct (and she is, figuratively speaking, mother to everything and everybody upon the beautiful estate where she lives) brought the babies and old turkeys through their blackhead troubles, and from her medical training, together with the aid she received from contact with members of her family who were physicians, she recognized symptoms and remedies which one could acknowledge as miracles and not overstep the truth. She has applied the fruits of her life work to the solving of a problem, and some day the country at large from Maine to California will raise its hat to Margaret Mahaney, the lady from Concord, Mass., who restored what was supposed to be lost:—the art of raising turkeys,—and that in confinement in poultry houses under practically the same conditions as chickens.

If you find time to go to Concord, by all means call on Miss Mahaney and she will make you welcome. She will show you more turkeys than have ever before been raised in one flock in the eastern states, and she will delight in telling you the simple methods she uses. On the following pages she will tell you in her own way how she accomplishes it.

We repeat, Miss Mahaney is a wonderful woman. She has a beautiful estate on which to produce these birds, but others are doing just as wonderful work with them by following her teachings.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION iii

A LETTER TO MY READERS 3

FACTS ABOUT TURKEY RAISING 13

Part 2

Breeding 15

BRIEF OUTLINE OF MY METHOD OF RAISING TURKEYS 23

Throwing the Red 27

BREEDING 31

Selection and Treatment of Breeding Stock 31

Rules for the Selection of Stock 32

Kind of Hens to Select 33

Number of Females to One Male 35

Care to be Given Breeding Stock 36

Mating 38

Feeding During Breeding Season 38

Nests and Nesting 40

Hatching 42

First Feed 43

Avoid Vermin 45

The Setting of the Turkey Hen 46

THE THROWING OF THE RED AND YOUNG TURKEYS 55

INVESTIGATION OF DISEASES 65

BLACKHEAD 71

My First Successful Fight Against Blackhead 73

To Detect Blackhead 78

Treatment of Full Grown Turkeys 79

Blackhead in Young Turkeys 81

Starts With a Common Cold 84

Treatment of a Common Cold 84

COMMON DISEASES 91

Rheumatism 91

“Rotten Crop,” Sometimes Mistaken for Blackhead 93

Part 3

Cold—Catarrh—Cough—Bronchitis 94

Roup 96

Consumption of the Throat 100

Consumption of the Lungs 101

Swollen Heads 104

Sore Eyes and Head 109

Constipation in Turkeys 110

Diarrhea 112

Diarrhea in Little Turkeys 115

Gapes 116

Tape Worm 117

Peritonitis 119

THE BRONZE TURKEY 125

The Organs and Size 125

Coloring 126

Selection of Breeding Stock 127

Marketing 129

Dressing 130

Shipping 131

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

Miss Mahaney at Turkey Park Frontispiece

Miss Mahaney’s $150.00 Prize Tom v

Showing Style of Runs 17

The Mahaney System Develops Strong, Hardy Birds 23

“Give the Turkeys All the Milk You Can” 26

R. I. Reds and Plymouth Rocks Make Excellent Mothers 43

Breeding Pens 47

Turkeys Should Be Tamed 51

Part 4

Friends (Miss Mahaney and “Grandma Cleaves”) 77

Women Make the Most Successful Turkey Raisers 82

Turkeys Thrive Best on High Land 92

Turkey Raising Is an Interesting and Healthful Occupation 126

A LETTER TO MY READERS

TURKEY PARK, CONCORD, MASS.

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.

Sincerely, etc.

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.

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