The turkey is almost exclusively a farm product. It is possible to grow a few good turkeys in confinement, but this is rarely done except in experimental work or by persons who grow a few for amusement and for an opportunity to study some of their characteristics. A few adult turkeys may be kept on a small farm and remain about the homestead as other poultry does. The turkeys themselves may get along very well, but they are likely to abuse the fowls, and as they can easily fly over any ordinary fence, they cannot be controlled except by putting them in covered yards. Turkeys kept under such conditions cause so much trouble that, after the novelty of watching them has worn off, the owner soon disposes of them. It is where the farms are large and there is a great deal of woodland and pasture through which the turkeys may roam without strict regard to farm boundaries, and large grain and grass fields where they can forage after the crops are removed, that turkeys in large numbers are grown for market with good profit. On such farms, too, the farmer, if he is a good breeder, can produce the finest exhibition specimens.
=Size of flocks.= The number of turkeys kept on a farm for breeding usually depends upon the number of young it is desired to rear, but the difficulty of keeping more than one adult male with the flock tends to restrict the annual production to what can be reared from one male. Experience has taught that it is not advisable to have more than ten or twelve females with one male. Sometimes a much larger number is kept with one gobbler, and the eggs hatch well and produce thrifty poults; oftener an excess of females is responsible for poor results which the breeder attributes to other causes. The average hen turkey lays only eighteen or twenty eggs in the spring. Some hens lay even less. Once in a long time a turkey hen lays continuously for many months. A turkey grower who raises eight or ten turkeys for each hen in his breeding flock does very well. To do much better than this the hatches must be exceptionally good and the losses very light. Those who grow turkeys for profit expect them to pick the most of their living from the time they are a few weeks old until they are ready to fatten for market. A grower will, therefore, rarely undertake to hatch more young turkeys than he thinks can find food on the available range. It takes a very large farm to provide food for a hundred young turkeys and the old birds which produced them, after the young ones are well started. On many large farms where turkeys are grown regularly, not more than seventy or eighty are ever hatched, and if losses are heavy, not more than two or three dozen may be reared. A farmer who grows from seventy to a hundred turkeys is in the business on a relatively large scale. Flocks of larger size are sometimes seen in the fall, but not very often. The ordinary farm flock of breeding turkeys rarely has less than three or four or more than ten or twelve hens.