About Turkey Farming

Every year about 250 million turkeys are raised in the U.S., which is roughly 1 for every man, woman and child in the country. Many of these birds are specifically raised for Christmas and Thanksgiving, while the rest are exported or used in sandwich meat. However, very little thought is given to where all these turkeys come from and how they are raised.

  1. Types

    • There are 2 different ways to categorize turkey farms. One is simply to classify them by size: a small operation run for fun or to turn a modest profit is a hobby farm, while a serious, for-profit operation is a commercial farm. The other way is to categorize them by methodology, with organic turkey farms on the one hand, and industrial turkey farms on the other.

    The Industrial Farm

    • An industrial turkey farm is very similar to an industrial chicken farm. Day-old poults are delivered from a dedicated hatchery and placed in a shed, where they will spend their entire lives. The floor is a litter of sawdust and straw for soaking up bird waste, and the lighting is kept low to reduce aggressive behavior among the birds. Sometimes the beaks are cut for the same reason. They are fed cereals with added vitamin and artificial proteins. Antibiotics are used to control health problems stemming from farm conditions. Turkeys are raised for maximum weight gain, and then slaughtered in an abattoir on the farm at between 3 and 7 months of age.

    The Organic Farm

    • The USDA classifies a free-range farm as one that grants access to the outdoors, so technically it can be an industrial farm with an outlet to an outdoor, fenced-in pen. While this is unquestionably better than a strictly industrial operation, it is only better by a small degree, and thus the term "free-range" is misleading. These birds may still be fed antibiotics, for example. On the other hand, the qualification "organic" is much more stringent. Organic qualifications deal with the feed used and ban the general use of antibiotics, which essentially makes the use of industrial farm techniques impossible. Most hobby farms or small operations are either free-range or both free-range and organic, with the latter usually raising heritage turkeys.

    Heritage Turkeys

    • Turkeys bred using organic techniques and from stock that predates the modern strain bred for industrial purposes are called "heritage turkeys." In addition to being organic and from the proper genetic stock, these turkeys must mate naturally, live long lifespans (females for 5 to 7 years and males for 3 to 5 years) and have a slow growth rate.

    Processing

    • Nearly all industrial farms, and many smaller operations, operate their own facility for killing and dressing turkeys. A modern abattoir is surprisingly similar regardless of the animal being slaughtered: the turkeys are suspended in shackles by their feet, killed, scalded to loosen the feathers, plucked by machine and dressed (gutted).