Turks

We had a really good turkey year this year. Other than the poults being lost in the mail for a few days, there was very little drama involved at all. The last week they were out was a bit of a hassle because the weather got cold enough to freeze the above ground water lines that work so well about 7 months out of the year, but I kind of assumed that having turkeys out on pasture into the end of November was going to pose some frozen water problems sooner or later. Surprisingly this is the first year out of the past five that we had to haul the turkeys water for more than a day or so. According to my calculations, 118 sixteen week old turkeys drink about 60 gallons of water per day in sub freezing temperatures.

Other than that the whole endevor was a cake walk. On Tuesday we butchered all 118 birds starting at about 8:30am and finishing up at 4:30pm, with about an hour out for lunch. We had a great crew of 5 plus me. It looks like the turkeys averaged about 16 or 17 pounds.

By 8pm just about all the birds had been picked up by our customers and we were in watching the Peanuts Thanksgiving special with the kids.