How our Turkeys became Thanksgiving Dinner

Or "The Final Gobble"

The Norman Rockwell painting below is an American classic.  It reminds me so much of Sunday meals at my grandmother Bumby's house when I was growing up and offers me up a generous slice of nostalgic remembrances that make me smile.  Everyone in the picture is so happy in anticipation of a great meal and fellowship.  Well, everyone except for the turkey, of course.

Norman Rockwell Painting

Today's posting is going to be rather long and heavily laden with pictures.  I want to add some warning as the photos to follow are not going to be nearly as polished and prim and proper as the Rockwell painting.  In fact, we're going to take an up close and personal look at how that golden brown bird became... Thanksgiving Dinner.  If you are squeamish, maybe skip today's post and open us up tomorrow.  We'll likely be talking about something more pleasant.  Or maybe no - we've been known to do a full post on cow poop.  Okay, consider yourselves warned.

Turkeys, if you look up close at them, are atrociously ugly.  They have all these 'warty-looking' bumps on their heads and they have a dangly-thing called a snood on top of their heads that droops down.  But beauty is in the eye of the eye of the beholder and to me, they are beautiful, in a strange way.  Believe it or not, the wild turkey almost became our national bird.  Instead, the bald eagle got the honor.

Our turkeys strutting around

I like this picture of old Tom that I took.  It shows him all fluffed up and you can clearly see his beard.  He's a proud, genteel fellow that is serious about his appearance.  Sadly there are no turkey hens in our barnyard, so he's "all dressed up with no place to go," some might say.

All fluffed up!

This was our first attempt at raising turkeys.  We have two of them - both males and they are just cool to have around the farm.  They make all different sorts of noises and it has been quite an experience to raise them.  We've given them a good life.

Unfortunately for the turkeys, they are farm animals which means they are food. They're not pets.  We try not to get attached to things that'll end up on our table.  I guess I'll go ahead and admit this now.  When it came time to kill these birds, I almost handed Tricia $25 and said, "Why don't you go buy a couple of turkeys that we don't know."  Almost - but I didn't.  That's why we raised them is to eat them.  So the chase ensued.

On the run...

With the help of Russ, my son in from college, and a big net, we snared the first one and Russ carried the big bird to the killing station.  Then we captured the second old boy.

It's time.

A critical thing when butchering any animal is a sharp knife.  I always spend time using a whet stone, honing oil, and a sharpening steel to put a good edge on our knives.  When butchering chickens, I use killing cones to hang them in.  Turkeys are too large for my cones, so I just hang them by their feet.  I take my sharpened knife and make a quick slice to the side of the turkey's head just behind the jaw in order to cut the jugular vein, allowing the turkey to bleed out.  You want to cut the jugular without cutting the esophagus or windpipe.  Once the jugular is cut, the turkey's heart will pump all of the blood out.  It is important to empty the turkey's carcass of blood. Bleeding out a bird in this way is humane as the bird is unconscious due to the lack of blood to the brain.   

Bleeding of old Tom

See his beard?  Male turkeys have beards and these beards were about 6 inches long!

Turkey beard

The plumage of the turkey is really something to see.

Turkey feathers

The turkeys bled out until one final 'death kick' and then they gave it up.  It is important to hold them tightly during this time so that they don't bang into anything and bruise the meat.

Old Tom 'kicking the bucket'

Here is a picture that shows both of the turkeys hanging and bleeding out.  We've used the kid's old swing set for this purpose.  Who would've thought that an object that was used to bring such joy and happiness to our kids would bring such sadness and 'finality' to our turkeys? We like to think that we gave our turkeys a great life with 3 acres to roam on in the sunshine and under blue skies.  We also gave them a humane death.  

Swinging

Once the turkeys are pronounced dead, we dunk them for a couple of minutes into a pot of scalding water. We use a thermometer to keep the water at a steady 145 degrees.  At that temperature a proper scald is accomplished, enabling you to efficiently de-feather your birds without cooking them.  We use a crawfish pot for this job.

Scalding ol' Tom

I dunk the bird all the way down to the feet and then pick him all the way out of the water and then repeat again and again.  You know that the bird is completely scalded when you can pull a tail feather out easily with your hand.

Dunking the turkey

Once scalded we lay him on the table and everyone joins in the plucking festivities.

Plucking the feathers

Normally when we butcher chickens, we have a Whiz Bang chicken plucker that does the job for us.  You can search the blog for pictures of that contraption.  I'd put this invention right up there against Eli Whitney's cotton gin! For our turkeys, however, we did it the old-fashioned way - by hand. 

Let's get after it boys!

I present to you one of our Thanksgiving turkeys, fully plucked.  We weighed both birds prior to gutting them.  One of them weighed 18 1/2 pounds whole and netted 13 3/4 pounds once dressed.  The other weighed 16 pounds whole and netted 12 1/4 pounds once dressed (not counting the giblets in the final weight).  Back to cleaning the birds - now I cut off his feet and cut off his head.  You can see the red spot on his neck where the beard was attached.

Completely plucked Thanksgiving Turkey

I make an incision on the neck immediately above the breast and loosen the esophagus and his crop.  A turkey stores the food they swallow in their crop.  The crop, or craw, expands as it fills.  The contents of the crop soon descend into the gizzard, where the food is ground into usable form to be digested.  The gizzard contains rocks and other coarse materials the turkey has eaten to perform the grinding process.

Loosening the crop

It was amazing to me the difference in size between a chicken's crop and a turkey's crop.  The turkey's crop was like a large balloon.  Look at all of the acorns and grass that it was filled with!  That tells you this was a healthy bird.  Our birds are very healthy birds.  Did you know that it is impossible for a 'factory bird' to reproduce?  They are pumped up with high protein feed and hormones that their pectoral muscles are so enlarged, that they can't connect with the hen.  Our birds get the protein available to them in the pasture and the only reason they can't breed is that I don't have any hen turkeys.

A healthy crop full of acorns and grass signifying a well-fed bird

My hands were too messy to take pictures of the following and you'll probably thank me for that, but the next step is to make an incision directly beneath the turkeys' vent (anus), reach in waaaaayyyy up, running your hand along the breastbone, and grab the heart and pull.  The heart, liver, gizzard, and intestine, crop and esophagus will all come out.  You want to be careful here as you don't want the intestines to break inside the bird.

Once you have it all pulled out, cut around the anus and remove the intestine/internal organ combination, cutting out the heart, gizzard, and liver, cleaning them all up and putting them on ice.  Many people throw the giblets away, but this is great for eating and making your gravy to go on top of the cornbread dressing. Reach up into the cavity and use your fingers to pull out the lungs.  They'll be the bright pink things attached close to the backbone.  Use a hose to thoroughly wash out the bird's carcass.  We then submerge in cool water to allow the birds to cool for a bit.  

Cooling tank

All of the feathers, blood, head, feet, and entrails go into a separate bucket.  I bury this in the garden.  In addition to giving us a fine Thanksgiving meal, the turkeys will improve our garden soil, growing healthy vegetables for us next year.  What a deal!

Turkey waste for the garden compost along with two turkey beards I'll save as a trophy.

After about an hour, I dump off the water, replacing with fresh water and ice and I'll allow the turkeys to age overnight.

Aging the turkeys on ice

In the morning I'll pull the birds out of the ice, double wrapping them in plastic to avoid freezer burn, and I'll place them in the freezer where they'll wait for just a little while until they're put in the oven and then will be presented to our Thanksgiving table just as in Norman Rockwell's painting.  Thus ends our turkeys and the explanation of how our turkeys became Thanksgiving Dinner.  We've already begun to make plans to get replacement turkeys to do this again next year.

We are indeed thankful to our Creator for providing a good life, with great family and friends to share it with, for health, and for good, wholesome, fresh food to eat.  Thank You, LORD!  Here's wishing YOU a Happy Thanksgiving as well!