Today’s commercial turkey is selected to efficiently produce meat at the lowest possible cost. "It is an excellent converter of feed to breast meat, but the result of this improvement is a loss of the bird’s ability to successfully mate and produce fertile eggs without intervention. This means that turkeys marketed as 'heritage' must be the result of naturally mating pairs of both grandparent and parent stock." The definition of heritage turkey will help you understand what you're getting when you shell out the extra dough at Thanksgiving for your bird.

Posted on May 30, 2007

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I was also writing about:
Benefits of grass feeding
Heritage meat statistics
Commercial turkeys have lost their ability to fly
If we want to save the animals we must eat them
Seed Savers saves and shares heirloom seeds
Heritage meats are like four-legged versions of the heirloom tomato
Heritage and heirloom day
The everpresent kids' menu
Birds aren't mammals but are milk fed
Chip bag origami instructions