Now that I’ve decided to spend the year raising all my own ingredients for our next Thanksgiving dinner, I have made some rather startling discoveries about turkeys.
The broad breasted white accounts for 99 per cent of all the turkeys consumed in North America. A turkey bred to gain weight so fast they are no longer able to breed naturally, their big breasts literally come between them.
I believe that into every life a little love should fall, even to those destined for a big silver roasting pan in the fall – and who knows? Maybe I’ll want to keep a mating pair through the winter.
To this end I have been scouring the internet for heritage breeds that are still able to pluck up a bit of romance in the back forty.
And that’s how I discovered turkey saddles.
Rochester Poultry, home of the big bold beautiful broad breast bronze breed assured me that their turkeys could reproduce naturally, but when I got to the miscellaneous section of their catalogue you can well imagine my surprise when I came across an item called turkey saddles for $12.00. The caption read: “As you know we do not do anything to stop our turkeys from breeding. They are just really bad at it! This handy hen saddle is a must to protect your hen and give leverage to your Tom.”
Feeling more than a little tainted I searched the internet for more information on this astonishing accessory. I found a lady who does one better. She sells designer turkey saddles. For a reasonable fee she will stitch your farm’s name or the name of your turkey onto the saddle or let you choose from a selection of cute barnyard pictures.
Now I’m no livestock neophyte, not only do I live on a farm, I was also born and raised on one. Over the years I have patiently stood by while visitors have pointed, howled with laughter or lost their lunch over the kind of stuff I take for granted.
Simply witnessing a horse pee can induce hysterics in otherwise perfectly reasonable people, while seeing a cow attempt to eat her newborn’s placenta can traumatize others for life.
But turkey saddles? I have just developed a whole new brand of visitor empathy.
But that’s enough about saddles and sex. It’s a bit sobering to realize that the popularity of today’s broad breasted white came within a pinfeather of driving all the other breeds to extinction.
If it weren’t for the foresight of a handful of turkey enthusiasts, I would be left with the choice between a broad breasted white and a broad breasted white; a turkey that must be slaughtered before 20 weeks of age or it will simply crumple under its own weight and die. A turkey that is so stupid it no longer carries any of the endearing curiosity or natural traits of its heritage brothers and sisters.
When I related all my findings to Darcy he said, “So what you’re saying is that you’d rather we ate an intelligent turkey for Thanksgiving than a stupid one?”
“No,” I snapped. “I’d rather we ate a turkey that spent its life scratching around in the great outdoors doing turkey type stuff, instead of a turkey that has spent its entire miserable life in a crowded warehouse where it never even got to see the sun.”
“So you’d rather we ate a happy turkey than a miserable one.”
“Guess what else I found out,” I said, ignoring him. “In the last 15 years 190 breeds of farm animals have gone extinct and 1,500 more are at risk. In the last five years alone 60 breeds of cattle, goats, pigs, horses and poultry have disappeared worldwide.”
“So you want us to eat an intelligent, happy, endangered turkey.”
“Well somebody has to or else they’ll die . . . well you know what I mean. Anyway, look at this catalogue! It’s from a place in Ontario called Performance Poultry. They have all kinds of heritage breeds. Ridley bronze, blue slate, beltsville small white, royal palm, black Spanish, bourbon red and even one called narrangansett. Isn’t that something? Maybe we should get some of each!”
The look on Darcy’s face suggested he could easily commiserate with the wife of Harrowsmith writer Dan Needles, who woke up one night to find Dan sitting up in bed, lamp on, poring over a poultry catalogue.
Knowing full well what the outcome would be, she groaned and asked, “Couldn’t you just read Penthouse like other men?”
Shannon McKinnon is a humour columnist from the Peace River country. You can read more of her writing at www.shannonmckinnon.com