The food for fattening turkeys, said Tibbetts, should consist of a warm
dough, made from two parts corn meal and one part wheat bran. To a quart
of such dough he asserted that a tablespoonful of powdered eggshells
should be added, also a dust of Cayenne pepper. And if a really perfect
food for fattening poultry were desired, Tibbetts declared that a
tablespoonful of new rum should be added to the water with which the
quart of dough was mixed. A wonderful turkey food, no doubt!
Tibbetts also told Halstead to take a pair of sharp shears and cut off
an inch and a half of his turkey's "quitter," if it were too long and
bothered him about eating. If the turkey grew "dainty," as Tibbetts
expressed it, Halstead was to make the dough into rolls about the size
of his thumb, then open the bird's beak, shove the rolls in, and make
him swallow them--three or four of them, three times a day.
Halstead came home from the Corners and made a quart of dough according
to the Tibbetts formula. I do not know certainly about the spoonful of
rum. If Tibbetts gave him the rum, Halstead kept quiet about it; the old
Squire was a strict observer of the Maine law.
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