THE PROUD BIRD : Uncommon Fowl

Every Thanksgiving, it seems, we hear how Benjamin Franklin lobbied for the turkey as our national bird. This is not exactly true. His allegiance to the turkey was never proclaimed in any official petition, but is found in a letter to his daughter Sarah, written after a trip to France. The French, he wrote, found America’s choice of the national bird odd, precisely because the bald eagle looked too much like a turkey.

Franklin, never one to pass up the opportunity for a comic rant, went on: “I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country; he is a Bird of bad moral Character . . . like those among Men who live by Sharping and Robbing, he is generally poor and often very lousy (louse-ridden). Besides, he is a rank Coward; the little Kingbird , not bigger than a Sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. . . .”

Disgusted as he is by the bald eagle, Franklin finds one thing pleasing, even desirable about the national bird: its resemblance to the turkey.

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“For in Truth, the Turk’y is in comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. Eagles have been found in all Countries but the Turk’y was peculiar to ours, the first of the Species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and serv’d up at the Wedding Table of Charles the Ninth. He is, though, a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards, who should presume to invade his FarmYard with red coat on.”

Franklin is correct about the turkey being a true American native: In fact, it is the one and only important domestic animal to have originated in North America. Franklin is not so accurate about when turkeys were introduced to Europe, but shared a then-prevalent belief that they were brought from the New World by Loyola. (Some folks even called turkeys “Jesuits,” an appellation that the writer Alexander Dumas considered insulting to the birds.)

More likely, domestic turkeys were brought to Europe by Spanish explorers who had found barnyard turkeys in all parts of Mexico and Central America, where Aztecs and Tarascans in particular kept large numbers for feathers and meat. These turkeys were brought to Europe as a food source, and were then reintroduced to Northeastern America by colonists. (Meanwhile, domesticated turkeys continued to be grown in the Southwest Native American cultures.)

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Franklin is right about turkey’s natural feistiness: This writer has personally experienced it, having been terrorized as a child by two cruel toms at an uncle’s farm. And last year, the small town of Holliston, Mass., was invaded by a pesky flock of 17 wild turkeys led by a dominant male that citizens named Tom or Tommy. The flock chased children, accosted adults and blocked traffic. When a housewife went to shoo the flock out of her garden, Tommy chased her back into the house.

In general, however, today’s Thanksgiving bird won’t be chasing anybody anyplace. Turkeys have always been easily domesticated, and it has been so easy to develop new breeds and strains quickly that aggressiveness, as well as many other more desirable traits--such as the ability to run, hop, resist diseases and mate--are no longer found in today’s farm flocks. In fact, to see what we human beings have required from the turkey, one need only look to the differences between a wild and domestic bird.

The basic distinction can be seen at the La Purisima Mission, a few miles east of Lompoc. There, in one pasture, are a wild tom and two wild hens and a domestic Bronze turkey, all about the same age, a little more than a year. The wild turkeys are part of the Mission’s effort to keep a few animals typical to missionary times.

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The wild turkeys look like enormous pheasants, only without the pheasant’s resplendent coloration. Still, the wild birds’ plumage is a burnished, glossy black with rippling iridescences of copper, indigo, and emerald and white stippling on the tail. The wild tom has a perky beard of hair-like feathers protruding from the middle of his chest--it adds a certain jaunty flourish to his strut. He stands about three feet tall. Hens are notably more petite and less colorful.

Both the wild and the domestic turkeys have bluish naked heads covered with warty red carbuncles and a few wiry whiskers--surely, bald eagles aren’t this ugly. Red wattles cluster at the throat and eventually, over years, accumulate into a mass that resembles great gobs of red candle drippings. In the meantime, the necks of these young birds, only as thick as a garden hose, seem particularly vulnerable.

And then, slung over the nose, there’s the thong of red flesh called a snood or cere, a feature most pronounced in the males. When the turkey is worried, alerted, or curious, the snood retracts to a stiff, tapered, finger-like point that twitches and curls as if reading the breeze.

The wild guys have huge, bright, black, curious eyes and a high-stepping gait that’s almost a prance. Their feet are scaly brown. They regard you with frank, dignified interest at a safe distance. When you approach, they quickly put a lot of pasture between you, thundering as they run. Wild turkeys are known for their ground speed, which can be up to 55 miles per hour. Once safely across the field, the wild turkeys resume their pecking and high-stepping through the grass. The slanted afternoon sun catches their wattles, which glow translucent and bright as tail lights or cherry lollipops.

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The domestic tom does not flee. He stands reluctantly and, deciding you’re not too threatening, lumbers off a few feet. He’s far too poorly designed--too round and way too bosomy--to muster any real speed. His look is glazed, dull. Except for bullying the occasional child, he is no watchdog. He expresses displeasure at your approach with a chesty warble that says, most halfheartedly, “You’re in my space.” His feathers are a dull brown, far duller even than those of the wild hens. Clearly, he’s bred not for fleetness or beauty, but for meat.

And yet even this domestic Bronze tom is a vivacious, fit, well-attired genius compared to today’s commercial bird. He is also in far greater danger of extinction than his wild cousins.

Gone, or scarce as hens’ teeth, are all the old domesticated breeds: the White Holland, the Bronze, the Narragansett, the Bourbon Red, the Black, the Slate, the Royal Palm and the Beltsville Small White. Today’s strains and breeds don’t even have a name; they are numbered according to intricate genetic equations.

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The domestic turkey has also been bred for fast growth and broad breasts. A wild turkey or natural bronze takes more than six months to mature (around 25 to 28 weeks) into a respectable table bird. Thanks to genetics, commercial turkeys, housed and fed plenty of meat fat, mature in a scant four months (14 to 16 weeks).

In the wild, wild turkeys segregate by sex into flocks. Each group has its own range, about a mile in radius. In the spring, flocks break up for mating. Young toms don’t breed; adult males establish individual “gobbling territories” and compete with each other for the hens’ attention through their calling. The females pay them visits. By March and April, hens are laying in well-concealed nests usually within a few hundred feet of water.

Commercial birds have no such sex life. Because of their broad breasts, they are incapable of mating: It is a structural impossibility. All commercial turkeys today are artificially inseminated. Even the smallest turkey farmer raising commercial birds has to order eggs from hatcheries.

In fact, there is probably only one domestic turkey farm in the United States where the birds mate naturally: the Wish Hatchery in Prairie City, Ore. The last turkey breeders in a state that was once a major breeding location, the Wish Hatchery is also the country’s most sustainable or self-sustaining turkey system: Breeding, hatching, growing and processing are all done on the property.

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Turkey breeding farms are kept separate and distinct from stock farms. The risk of disease transmission is so great that old birds and young birds cannot be together on the premises.

Valuable breeding stock live in biologically controlled atmospheres. People who enter these breeding environments must shower, change into regulation clothes, and shower again before leaving. While this intense “bio-security” does keep diseases from spreading through whole generations of birds, some farmers argue that raising breeding stock in such a tightly controlled environment reduces their adaptability.

In fact, in recent years, turkeys’ immune systems have notably declined. As North Dakota turkey farmer David Podoll says, “Selection is done for only growth rate and size. How can you select birds for hardiness and disease resistance if they’re kept in a hospital environment? You can’t.”

A handful of breeders across the country are concerned about the severe constriction of the turkey gene pool caused by the industry’s focus on broad-breasts, whiteness and rapid weight gain. Don Bixby, executive director of the American Livestock Breed Conservancy in Pittsboro, N.C., says, “We’re interested in strains that don’t have the broad-breasted gene. We need to study genetic characterizations that are out of the industrial loop.

“If you compare the white broad-breasted turkey to the wild turkey, you’ll see everything that has been lost,” says Bixby. “Wild turkeys are wily, they have a strong sense of parental protection, they’re good at foraging, at knowing what’s good for them and where to find it. They mate naturally. These are all characteristics of fitness lacking in commercial birds.”

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“Commercial birds are dull. They’ve lost mental and biological abilities. Commercial birds have very little sense of self-preservation. You hear about them drowning in the rain. The fact that commercial turkeys are dependent upon humans for reproduction means that the entire domestic turkey population is one generation away from extinction.”

It is possible that turkey breeders may want some of the traits left behind in the quest for enormity and quick growth. Unless some effort is made to preserve other strains of domestic birds, there will be no gene pool to draw on.

According to Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Industry Federation, most commercially available California turkeys such as Zacky, Foster and Butterball brands, come from the hatcheries as day-old “poults” to be raised on huge farms where they’re housed throughout their lives in long skinny barns, generally within 10 or 12 feet of water and food. Some smaller growers allow some free ranging. “But,” says Mattos, “most turkeys don’t walk a lot.”

Indeed. Walking does seem to be one of the vanishing traits of these turkeys. Leg problems--how to carry all that weight--are almost universal.

Even free-range birds have this problem. At Santa Rosa’s highly praised Willie Birds, where 60,000 birds gambol about 400 oak-studded acres, sometimes the birds are so rotund, spokesman Greg “Beagle” Brodsky says, “The legs can’t carry the birds.” Brodsky adds that there’s hope for a genetic solution: “We’re always experimenting.”

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Still, turkeys aren’t bred to the point of the Southern broiler chicken which, lacking the necessary heart and lung capacity to support its rapidly grown weight, doesn’t even want to walk.

For decades, it has been illegal to feed turkeys growth hormones, though producers still like to proclaim their birds hormone-free as if somebody else is pumping birds full of stilbesterol. The rapid growth seen in today’s turkeys is due strictly to genetic factors and, often, a diet rich in animal fat. If the birds are sick, they are treated with antibiotics, says Mattos, but before they can be processed, all traces of the medicine must be absent from the birds’ livers.

At 14 to 16 weeks, the birds are taken to one of half a dozen processing plants. During peak season, these plants handle about 35,000 birds apiece a day. Turkeys are stunned with an electric shock and then slaughtered with an automatic knife. The bird is gutted, plucked, and given a chlorine bath. Some turkeys are “basted”--injected with water or oil to help them stay moist during cooking. Machines do everything, although, Mattos says, there are inspectors and people there to assist.

Processing of this year’s frozen turkeys probably began in March, with a big push in October. Fresh birds, which are generally “crusted” with ice and held anywhere between 0 and 34 degrees (which the government still classifies as “frozen”) are processed starting two weeks or even a little more before Thanksgiving.

Huntsinger Ranch in the San Joaquin Valley (offices in Santa Clarita), which will also butcher around 60,000 to 70,000 free-range turkeys this year, has been in the turkey business continuously since 1934 and claims to have developed the way turkeys are currently processed.

“They used to be what is called ‘New York-dressed,’ ” says Peter Huntsinger. “That meant just plucked. Turkeys weren’t even gutted. The butcher would take them out, head on, weigh them, then clean them for the customer--you’d have to pick at the pinfeathers at home.” In the mid ‘40s, the Huntsingers developed a way to clean the bird and get the pin feathers off, make the bird “oven ready.”

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If you look hard enough, though, you can still find farm-raised wild turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner and there’s a good chance it came from Claremont, S.D., where David Olson farm-raises several hundred of the gobblers, as well as pheasants and free-range chicken.

“I don’t know how in the heck I got into wild turkeys,” says Olson. “A guy I knew had 28 of them he didn’t want any more, so I brought them here.”

Olson breeds, hatches and raises his birds to maturity, then trucks them up to Q & R Processing plant in Tolna, N.D., where they’re processed, fast-frozen and shipped to distributors in Denver and Minneapolis.

The turkeys live in a large 100-by-150 foot flight pen with lots of straw for cover and laying. Olson feeds them a mash of corn and soy beans, plus vitamins and minerals. The pen is covered with a high ceiling of nylon netting so the birds can fly but can’t fly out. “They can’t develop breast meat if they don’t fly and run around,” says Olson. “Exercise is important.”

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His birds are an unspecified mix of natural-breeding wild turkeys. In the spring, when the days get a little longer and warmer--at the end of March, in April and May--the hens start laying eggs. During this time, Olson gathers eggs up to four times a day. “If the hens start setting and clucking, they’ll stop laying,” says Olson.

After taking the eggs, he washes them, and and puts them into a cool 45- to 55-degree environment which slows the embryo’s development. Olson can hold the eggs at this temperature for up to 10 days, which enables him to plan the hatching in orderly weekly batches. He is a volunteer member of the National Poultry Improvement Plan, which tests laying hens and breeding toms for diseases.

“(Turkeys) are pretty curious,” Olson says. “They know when there’s a stranger in the yard. It makes them gobble.”

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Whether the novelty of wild turkeys is worth the price (around $5 a pound) must be decided on an individual basis. To those of us used to plump-breasted domestic birds, wild turkeys have a gaunt aspect. Once cooked, the meat is a bit springy but game lovers will find the dark meat far more flavorful than its domestic counterpart. While the meat itself is not especially dry, wild turkeys are not naturally juicy; an eight-pound bird yields only a couple tablespoons of pan juices. It’s, therefore, necessary to wet the stuffing sufficiently before roasting.

WILD TURKEY

1 (8- to 12-pound) wild turkey

1/2 lemon

1/2 cup butter, softened

Wild Turkey Stuffing

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Rinse and dry turkey well. Reserve giblets, neck, heart and liver for Wild Turkey Stock.

Rub interior with lemon. Fill neck and body cavities loosely with Wild Turkey Stuffing. Truss body cavity by tying legs together with kitchen string or floss or with trussing needle and string. Tuck wing tips under bird’s back.

Rub turkey generously with butter. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Place on rack in shallow baking pan. Roast at 325 degrees 12 to 14 minutes per pound, to internal temperature of 160 degrees. Baste well and frequently with butter and pan-drippings, adding more butter if needed. Juices should run clear, not pink. When done, let bird stand under foil 15 to 20 minutes before carving. Makes about 6 servings with 8-pound turkey.

Each serving, without Wild Turkey Stuffing, contains about:

660 calories; 388 mg sodium; 286 mg cholesterol; 41 grams fat; 0 carbohydrates; 70 grams protein; 0 fiber.

Wild Turkey Stuffing

4 loosely packed cups 1/4-inch cubes bread

1/2 pound chestnuts

6 ounces wild mushrooms, such as shitaake, oyster, chantarelles, etc., cleaned, dried and finely chopped

1 large onion, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

3 to 5 fresh sage leaves, chopped, or 1/4 teaspoon crumbled dry sage.

5 tablespoons butter

2 eggs, beaten

Turkey or chicken stock

Milk

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Toast bread cubes on baking sheet under broiler. With sharp knife, cut X in flat side of each chestnut. Spread chestnuts on baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees, shaking occasionally, 10 to 20 minutes, until shells pull away from meat. Peel as soon as cool enough to handle. Then and chop.

Saute mushrooms, onion, celery and sage in large skillet with butter until tender.

Combine bread, chestnuts and mushroom mixture in large bowl. Add eggs and enough stock and milk to moisten stuffing, about 1/2 cup of each. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Makes 6 cups stuffing.

Each 1/2-cup serving contains about:

190 calories; 214 mg sodium; 50 mg cholesterol; 7 grams fat; 29 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams protein; 1.96 grams fiber.

Where the Wild Birds Are

Wild turkeys can be ordered from Bristol Farms, Gelson’s Markets, Hughes Family Markets, Huntington Meats at the Farmer’s Market and selected Ralphs stores, or by phoning Broadleaf Venison (800) 336-3844, ext. 101. Prices are about $5 a pound.

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Bronze turkeys from David Podoll are available under the Bread & Circus label at all Mrs. Gooch’s stores for $1.98 a pound.

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Free-range turkeys from Willie Birds are available from Puritan Poultry in the Farmer’s Market for $1.99 a pound. Shelton’s Premium Poultry free-range turkeys are available at Bristol Farms and Gelson’s Markets for from $1.39 to $2.09. Huntsinger Ranch free-range turkeys are widely available across the Southland for from $1.29 to $1.59.

* Platter, sauceboat, napkin and napkin ring from the Kasl Company at the L.A. Mart.

* MORE TURKEY LORE: “The Bronze Age,” H16