Margaret Mahaney Talks About Turkeys (Illustrations)

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.