Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1914 — TURKEY BECOMING EXTINCT. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TURKEY BECOMING EXTINCT.

We’ll Have to Find Another Centerpiece For Thanksgiving Dinners. It is a sad fact to state, but if the truth must be told it looks very much as if the great American turkey, the center of our Thanksgiving festivities, will after not many years become as extinct as the auk. says the Washington Star. According to the census in 1890. the number of turkeys that year was 12,000,000. The population at that time was at least a dozen million less than it is now. But the last census returns place the turkeys at only 3.655.705. their valuation being $6,G05.815. Hence it is easily seen that while the turkey eating population is increasing by the hundreds of thousands.-the fowls themselves are decreasing at an even greater rate. We have a nation of 00,000.000 people and only 3.000.000 turkeys. Turkeys are very delicate birds, and in spite of their huge size they cannot stand the hardships that chickens can easily endure. By nature wild, thej

pine and die in confinement, .vet if left to wander too voting are killed by wet grass and vermin. They do not like to roost in a house like chickens, but prefer to sit in rows on the boughs of tall trees. Even in stormfe and blizzards they sit calmly as druids perched high on tiie swaying limbs and seemingly heedless of rain or cold. But put them in a warm house or in a cramped yard and they do not thrive. So the difficulty of raising them has been a large factor In the high price of their meat and their growing scarcity.

ON A TURKEY FARM.