A New System of Domestic Cookery

page 274

geese require no fattening if they have the run of good fields.

Turkies
Are very tender when young. As soon as hatched, put three pepper-corns down
their throat. Great care is necessary to their well-being, because the hen is so
careless that she will walk about with one chick, and leave the; remainder, or
even tread upon and kill them. Turkies are violent eaters; and must therefore be
left to take charge of themselves in general, except one good feed a day. The
hen sits twenty-five or thirty days; and the young ones must be kept warm, as
the least cold or damp kills them. They must be fed often; and at a distance
from the hen, who will eat every thing from them. They should have curds,
green-cheese parings cut small, and bread and milk with chopped wormwood in it;
and their drink milk and water, but net left to be sour. All young fowls are a
prey for vermin, therefore they should be kept in a safe place where none can
come; weasels, stoats, ferrets, creep in at very small crevices.

Let the hen be under a coop, in a warm place exposed to the sun, for the first
three or four weeks; and the young should not be suffered to go out in the dew
at morning or evening. Twelve eggs are enough to put under a turkey; and when
she is about to lay, lock her up till she has laid every morning. They usually
begin to lay in March, and sit in April. Feed them near the hen-house; and give
them a little meat in the evening, to accustom them to roosting there. Fatten
them with sodden oats or barley for the first fortnight; and the last fortnight
give them as above, and rice swelled with warm milk over the fire, twice a day.
The flesh will be beautifully white and fine-flavoured. The common way is to
cram them, but they are so ravenous that it seems unnecessary, if they are not
suffered to go far from home, which makes them poor.

Pea Fowl.
Feed them as you do turkies. They are so shy that they are seldom found for some
days after hatching: and

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