Feedback on Turkeys

(Page 4 of 4)

November/December 1973
By the Mother Earth News editors 
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Finally, a word about raising turkeys and chickens together: I've done so for nine years and have never seen a case of blackhead. I know people who have mixed their flocks longer than that and never had trouble. This isn't to say that you won't have problems-you might-but I think that if you have 40 or 50 chickens and get a dozen turkeys it's not necessary to go to the effort of keeping them completely separate. In the 1940's people were paranoid about a lot of diseases, not just blackhead.

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I'd suggest, in conclusion, that beginners with livestock find out what the current practices are before they assume that "older" must mean "better". Some changes are genuine improvements and shouldn't be overlooked through blind love of the past.

Pat Bowles
San Antonio,Texas

I'm glad you responded, Pat...which is one of the reasons I decided to run Practical Animal Husbandry in the first place. I do have to take exception to your statement about my"blind acceptance of Widmer's work", however. That's why I said,right up at the top of the first page of the article:

Back in 1949—before factory farming and the "pump'em full of chemicals" school of agriculture blitzed the country—a follow named Jack Widmer wrote a little book called Practical Animal Husbandry. Now that manual wasn't what you'd call completely exhaustive, the writing style wasn't the best and a few of the ideas it advanced—such as confining laying hens in cages—were later refined into the kind of automated farming that so many of us are fighting against these days.

Still, Practical Animal Husbandry contained a good deal of basic information that today's "homesteaders" all too often need and don't know where to find. I'm pleased, then, that the publisher of the book, Charles Scribner's Sons, has granted me permission to reprint excerpts from this out-of-print manual. I think that many of my readers will find the following information both interesting and informative.

Didn't you notice that, Pat?—MOTHER.

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