Turkey Tales : To Make a Clean Breast of It, Live Birds Just Can’t Be Had in County

You may be surprised to hear that the turkeys of Orange County--the winged variety--have flown the coop.

Maybe not exactly flown . More like they were removed, as in taken elsewhere more than 20 years ago, mostly to the giant breeding farms of Central California, South Carolina and Minnesota to fatten up for your Thanksgiving tables.

As far as the county agricultural commissioner’s office can determine, there haven’t been any turkeys raised around these parts since the early 1960s, and even then there were far fewer than 100,000 birds.

“The industrialization has been the demise of the turkey,” says Bill Miller, a county agriculture inspector with nearly 27 years on the job. “They take up a lot of space, and what with the fly problems, I don’t imagine many people would want to live next door to them.”

So for those people who like to fell their own Christmas tree or select their own lobster at a fancy restaurant, a truly personalized Thanksgiving could mean quite a trek.

But there is hope for those who fancy freshness.

Take Glenn Miser, for example, the 71-year-old owner of Ferguson Wholesale Poultry in Cypress, who says his turkeys meet their maker as late as a week before T-day. What’s more, he added, his all-natural birds never come near any cottonseed oil or other modern flavor enhancers.

“It’s not that I’m a health faddist,” Miser says. “I’ll eat hot dogs--I love them. But I think it’s the difference in the flavor. You can buy Toyotas or you can buy Cadillacs. They both take you to the same place.”

Miser’s family-run business, among the last of what may soon be a dying breed of county poultry wholesalers, competes against industry giants like Foster Farms and Zacky Farms. And while Thanksgiving is a frenzied time for the big boys too, Miser and his 17 employees, who take in and ship out some 4,500 turkeys this time of year, feel it in their bones.

“Oh, but I like working with the turkeys,” Miser says. “You’re up at 5 a.m. and out of here at 10 p.m. It will last a couple of days like that. But by this afternoon, it’s all over with.”

And while many will push away from dinner today happy to forget about turkey for another year, other Americans are happy to devote themselves to the big bird all year round.

45 Million Birds

David Goldenberg, for one. Director of industry relations for the National Turkey Federation, a nonprofit trade association that represents 2,500 turkey farmers and processors, Goldenberg has all sorts of turkey trivia at his fingertips.

He says that about 45 million turkeys will be carved up nationwide today, the lion’s share of the estimated 71 million to 75 million birds that will be sold during the year.

And that, he says, means that per capita, Americans will eat 16 1/2 pounds of turkey in 1988--a far cry from their 65.1 pounds of chicken, but still way ahead of smoked rattlesnake.

Goldenberg, whose job is to promote turkey-laden holidays like Thanksgiving, also offers the novel theory that the Pilgrims of Plymouth, Mass., who made such a big deal out of that 1621 turkey feast, may not have been the first to feature the glorious T-bird in a fancy meal.

“Maybe the settlers at Jamestown had the first Thanksgiving,” he says. “The Pilgrims were better writers than the Jamestown settlers, and so we know a lot more about them.”

But even Goldenberg admits to some hesitancy with his theory. He adds that the Jamestown settlers, mostly business people with lousy survival skills, would probably have had a tough time hunting down the wily wild turkey. Unlike their dullard domesticated cousins, the wild turkey can take flight instantly and has excellent eyesight.

A rather bah-humbug opinion on Thanksgiving comes from Thomas DiBacco, a professor of business history at American University in Washington, who suggests that if it weren’t for some savvy turkey producers taking advantage of President Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation of a national day of thanksgiving and prayer, we might as well have adopted peanut butter sandwiches as the traditional feast.

Promoting the Turkey

“There is no rhyme or reason for us to have turkey on Thanksgiving except that business promoted it,” DiBacco told the Associated Press.

After the Civil War ended, he said, poultry producers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland started promoting turkey as the main dish for Thanksgiving. At the time, it was more profitable to produce than chicken.

But if you really want to go back, John Skinner, professor emeritus of poultry science at the University of Wisconsin and archivist for the American Poultry Historical Society, can top that.

According to Skinner and other turkey pundits, Christopher Columbus may be responsible for bringing turkey to the masses.

Not that he intended it, but during his third voyage to the New World, Columbus came across some turkeys in the Caribbean and decided that his benefactor, Queen Isabella of Spain, might be tickled by the odd creature.

Along with a few other local curiosities, like some native Indians, he packed up a few turkeys and shipped them to Spain, beginning a 15th-Century royal rage for turkey.

“The idea that royalty possessed something that the common person didn’t was important,” Skinner says. “In our country, George Washington was very much taken by some of the animal oddities of the world, and the heads of state of other countries, in a maneuver to gain political favor, would bring animals from their countries. That’s how we got the Chinese geese and the golden pheasant.”

Skinner says that before long, even the commoners in Europe were turned on to turkey, and a domesticated turkey industry was born. It was not until the late 1800s, however, when some of the European birds were brought to the United States, that our national turkey trade took root.

“It was a shortcut really,” Skinner says. “Instead of domesticating our own wild turkeys, we took advantage of 300 years of breeding in Europe.”

Yes, They’re Stupid

And in case you’re wondering about all those turkey jokes, yes, it is true that the turkey on your Thanksgiving table was probably so stupid that it could have drowned in the rain or suffocated while hiding from an airplane overhead.

But Skinner says there is an explanation. It appears that turkeys raised in the age of mechanization still have vestiges of some of their wild instincts.

Wild turkeys, the smart ones, hold their head up to the rain so the water can wash off their feathers. It also keeps their skins drier. Domestic turkeys, unfortunately, have been known to go overboard, taking in so much water that they can’t breath.

And because overhead noises in the wild usually mean a predator, young turkeys may react by diving beneath their mothers. But the young of the domestic variety, hearing a plane overhead, may throw themselves into a heap, sometimes smothering themselves.

“We just don’t understand their habits,” Skinner says of his feathered friends. “They have a mind of their own.”

TURKEY NOTES Family: Meleagrididae. Largest game bird native to North America. Related to pheasant.

Height: About 4 feet. Males (toms) larger than females (hens). A young turkey is a poult .

Weight: An adult male Bronze, the largest domesticated turkey, weighs up to 50 pounds; the hen 16 pounds. The largest turkey was raised in 1967 and weighed 75 pounds.

Wild: Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas. On average, turkey hunters are successful only 13% of the time. By comparison, deer hunters bag their prey up to 50% of the time. Wild turkeys have excellent eyesight, can take to flight instantly, unlike domesticated turkeys.

Domesticated: By the Aztecs, and Zuni Indians. Feathers used for adornments and charms.

U.S. consumption: About 71 million annually; about 45 million of them on Thanksgiving Day. Per capita consumption has increased 150% since 1960 and 50% since 1980.

Commerce: California is the third largest turkey-producing state, behind North Carolina and Minnesota and ahead of Arkansas. Gross annual income of about $900 million in U.S.

History: The first Thanksgiving dinner in 1621 featured venison, duck, goose and eels, but existing records indicate that turkey was not on the menu.

National Bird: Benjamin Franklin proposed the turkey be named the national bird. To his dismay, the turkey lost to the bald eagle by a single vote.

Holiday: President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it the last Thursday of November in 1863. President Lincoln issued a presidential “pardon” to his son’s pet turkey because the boy feared that it would wind up on the White House dinner table. In 1939 President Franklin Roosevelt decided that it should be the third Thursday to give store owners more time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It took a joint resolution in Congress to settle the matter in 1941.

Space: In 1969, roast turkey was the first meal eaten on the moon by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Slang: “An inferior entertainment” since before 1930; “any worthless, useless, unsuitable thing” since 1941; “an ineffective, incompetent, objectionable or disliked person” since 1951.

Sources: World Book Encyclopedia, Collier’s Encyclopedia, Slang Dictionary, Hallmark Cards, Associated Press