Gobbled Up : 50,000 Birds Later, Turkey Farmer Finally Can Take a Rest

Take a long look around Gary Lee’s turkey ranch and you may wonder if something is missing.

There’s none of the gobbling or warbling you might expect to hear on a ranch that raises 50,000 birds at a time. Inhale deeply and you won’t smell even a hint of the manure that normally blankets the range where turkeys feed and roam.

Peek into Lee’s refrigerator and you won’t even see a Butterball.

In the days before Thanksgiving, the one thing you can’t find at Ventura County’s only turkey ranch is a turkey. And that’s just the way Gary Lee likes it.

“For the first time in months I have a minute to catch my breath,” said the 42-year-old rancher. “And besides, if I had turkeys on my ranch right now, you wouldn’t be having Thanksgiving.”

Lee just finished shipping 1 million pounds of turkey to be processed in Fresno, leaving just enough time to ensure 50,000 Thanksgiving diners will have a fresh bird on their table.

Now, as winter sets in and snow begins to dust the rural stretch of county land northeast of Pine Mountain, the only reminder of the toms and hens that filled Lee’s pens are the white feathers that collect in corners and catch on wire fencing.

For the next five months, he will clean and service the intricate machinery that shovels food to the tiny poults so they can balloon to as much as 35 pounds in about 15 weeks. By April, the ranch will be ready for a new crop of 50,000 baby turkeys, carried from Fresno in temperature-controlled trucks.

Walking his land in blue overalls and a brown denim jacket, the easygoing rancher reflected on the cutthroat business he once swore he would avoid.

“For a long time I wanted to do anything but raise turkeys,” said Lee, who spent several years in the Coast Guard. “But then I found out it is not so bad to work for yourself. There’s a lot involved in farming. You’ve got to be a Jack-of-all-trades.”

Lee is involved in every aspect of his ranch operation, from growing feed to fixing the flats on the aging trucks that haul wood chips and manure out onto the range.

The hard labor, he said, has been the key ingredient in his effort to keep the ranch running.

Lee is still in business, which is enough to prove he has bucked the odds in an industry that recently came close to ruin.

Two years ago, one of four major turkey producers, Louis Rich Co., shut down its California operations, according to John Voris, an industry expert who works for the University of California.

“When they left, the turkey industry went into a tailspin,” Voris said. “Dozens of growers went under, and their empty facilities became worthless.”

For years California had run neck and neck with the nation’s leading turkey states, producing 32 million birds in 1990.

But between 1992 and 1993, the number of turkeys grown here plummeted to 21 million, Voris said.

“Our production fell behind North Carolina, Minnesota, even Arkansas, of all places,” Voris said. “The drop, combined with high taxes and high labor costs, made things look pretty desperate.”

Lee watched anxiously as the handful of Ventura County growers began to falter.

“Those last few years were tough,” Lee said. “I was lucky because I had a contract (with a major national turkey producer). Others were not so lucky.”

In addition to the economic climate, Lee has had to worry about the unpredictable weather that changes daily in the county’s backcountry.

If the weather is too hot, the birds do not breed. And if it’s too cold, the birds begin to huddle together to keep warm.

“That would be fine, except they begin to pile up on one another and the guys on the bottom don’t usually fare too well,” Lee said.

Weather can also cause the turkeys to get sick, and certain illnesses cannot be treated because of the strict federal bans on the use of most medications.

“It can really ruin your day to come out and see a group that’s sick,” Lee said. “You can tell right away because they look droopy, and they all start to snit--which is a sort of noise turkeys make when they sneeze.

“When you hear 25,000 birds making that noise, you know you’ve got a problem.”

Lee never grows close enough to the birds to sympathize with their predicament.

“Let’s face it, turkeys are not easy to grow attached to,” he says, as a smile curls under his mustache. “They’re not cuddly little animals.”

Still, while they may not be likable animals, Lee said he does appreciate what they have done for him.

“I don’t regret getting into turkeys,” he said. “It may not be the typical way of life, but it’s treated me just fine.”