Hurry Burry Farm is pleased to be able to offer fresh, free-range, milk-fed turkeys for Thanksgiving. Why are we so happy about this? Until you have tasted how tender, flavorful and juicy a Hurry Burry Turkey is, you will never know how delicious Thanksgiving turkey can really be. The difference in taste between a fresh free-range turkey and a frozen grocery-store bird is like night and day. You and your family will wonder how you ever managed to survive the holidays eating a frozen factory turkey. Additionally, by buying a fresh - and by fresh we mean NEVER frozen to ANY degree - turkey, your cooking time is actually reduced!

Hurry Burry's turkeys are the classic broadbreasted whites. The big difference is in how they are raised. These birds spend the first several weeks in a brooding house under heat lamps - baby turkeys need temperatures of 90+ degreees for their first couple weeks; then the temps are gradually reduced until the heat lights are no longer needed. They are then moved to portable bottemless pens to adjust to being outside on pasture. The turkeys stay in these pens for a week or two to aclimate to their new environment. Once they are a little bigger and hardier, we turn them loose inside a pasture surrounded by electric fencing to keep out predators. In addition to their usual feed, they get plenty of cracked corn and several gallons of fresh goat milk every day. The sun, grass, milk and exercise creates the huge difference in taste between store-bought turkey and Hurry Burry Free-Range Turkey. Why spoil Thanksgiving dinner with a bird raised in a sunless factory, injected with water, antibiotics and a multitude of flavor enhancers, when you can have the melt in your mouth tenderness and superior flavor that comes from a Hurry Burry Turkey?

Free-Ranging Turkeys at Hurry Burry Farm

Last year the turkeys were in the main goat pasture. The blue pen in the back was where they were fed to keep the goats away from their feed.

The problems with turkey factory farms

Turkeys raised on factory farms are hatched in large incubators and never see their mothers or feel the warmth of a nest. When they are only a few weeks old, they are moved into filthy, windowless sheds with thousands of other turkeys, where they will spend the rest of their lives. To keep the birds from killing one another in such crowded conditions, parts of the turkeys’ toes and beaks are cut off, as are the males’ snoods (the flap of skin under the chin). All this is done without any pain relievers—imagine having the skin under your chin chopped off with a pair of scissors. Millions of turkeys don’t even make it past the first few weeks of life in a factory farm before succumbing to “starve-out,” a stress-induced condition that causes young birds to simply stop eating.

From New York Magazine's "How to Buy a Turkey - Holiday Food Guide 2005"

Butterball, like any self-respecting multi-million-dollar, category-leading brand, would have you believe its turkeys are, well, the only turkeys. The truth is, there are all manner of ways these days to get your white-meat, dark-meat, and tryptophan fix. Here, a guide to all things Meleagris gallopavo.

By far the best-selling turkeys in the U.S. are the mass-produced, factory-farmed birds—Butterball, etc.—sold in supermarkets. Almost exclusively broad-breasted whites—a breed that’s also referred to as “large white” because of the size of its breast—these birds are typically raised in factory conditions, sometimes thousands to a barn, and may be treated with growth hormones to enhance their size and antibiotics to prevent disease. The birds tend to be raised quickly, in about twelve weeks, which yields a large and inexpensive supply but doesn’t allow the birds’ flavor to develop fully. Many factory-farmed birds are injected during processing with a solution that might contain water, stock, butter, or other seasonings to make the bird plumper, and more flavorful. That process produces a large bird that cooks up moist and tender, but it can also produce off-flavors and a mushy texture. Factory-farmed birds range in size anywhere from 8 to 28 pounds (one pound per person is a good serving guideline) and tend to be inexpensive—$1.50 or so per pound.

Quality-obsessed foodies like Dan Barber, chef-owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and Tom Biggs of Four Corners Farm in Vermont, who supplies many of the city’s top chefs, have recently begun offering “pastured” turkeys. Broad-breasted whites raised in the style of Heritage turkeys, the birds are allowed to roam freely in pastures, they eat only natural foods, and they’re not treated with growth hormones, antibiotics, or additives. Like Heritage turkeys, pastured birds take longer to raise than factory-farmed broad-breasted whites, are smaller than their mass-produced cousins, and have a richer flavor and firmer texture. Pastured birds, like Heritage turkeys, also cost more than mass-produced supermarket birds, from $3.50 to $4.50 per pound. “Organic,” under USDA regulations, denotes a turkey that has been proved free of antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides, and certain other unnatural substances and processing techniques; organic birds must also be fed certified organic food and be free to range and eat outdoors. D’Artagnan, the well-known specialty meat distributors, sell organic turkeys such as Nicholas broad-breasted whites. They’re generally moist and juicy, and their flavor is milder than that of heritage birds (they cost about $7 per pound).

 

A happy Hurry Burry Free-Range turkey.