09/02/2026
What is your favorite heritage breed turkey & why?
I'm sharing another great article on choosing heritage breeds over hybrids, the turkey edition. If you don't know Frank Reese Jr or follow the Good Shepherd Conservancy, you should. He has made an amazing living off his passion for standard bred birds.
If you think you can't market heritage breeds as meat, this man will prove you wrong. He's made a life of preservation & demands a high price point for the hard work & effort.
I love the "weirdos", the ones who choose proper ethics in livestock stewardship first, over profit or finds a way to balance both. You can't call yourself a sustainable farm or homestead, if you raise unsustainable birds owned by Tyson or Butterball.
This article, & being intrigued by a man who spoke in the documentary "Eating Animals" , led me to another group of farmers all striving to say no to Cornish Cross hybrids & broad breasted turkeys. He made me truly understand the detriment these breeds cause to small farmers especially. When we support that system, we are a part of the problem & not contributing to the health of all involved, animal, human & environment.
I encourage everyone to read more about Frank's Conservancy or research heritage breeds through The Livestock Conservancy as well. Both great, informational programs to help preserve breeds in need of a comeback. It's what led me to raising Delaware & Holland Whites. It's what made me choose to opt out of Freedom Rangers & Broad Breasted Turkeys.
Here are a few highlights, I'll share full article below 👇 & be sure to watch for a blind tasting video I came across that I'll share later this week.
Slow food is real food. This is the way.
“Even if you buy a turkey that’s supposedly organic and free-range and all that stuff, the parents of those turkeys are still in horrible conditions. In fact, in the production of turkeys today, a male turkey never sees a female turkey in its entire life. All turkeys sold at grocery stores are manmade, dead-end animals. They cannot reproduce themselves. They’re only here because of a factory farm and man’s intervention. It makes no difference if they’re organic, free-range, all-natural, or whatever you want to call it. So even if you’re buying from a local farmer who says the bird runs around in a pasture, 90 percent of those farmers are still buying them from the same place Butterball does. They’re still artificial turkeys made through artificial insemination. They have been genetically engineered to grow faster. We’ve gotten terribly far from the natural, normal animal.”
“Industrial turkeys can get up to 40 pounds in 19 weeks. They’ve literally destroyed the pituitary gland in the brain that tells the animal, “You’re full, quit eating.” So the industrial turkey never stops eating. My turkeys don’t suffer from the morbid obesity gene mutation. My tom turkeys will get up to 24 pounds live weight in 24 weeks. It takes longer for them to grow."
" The closer you get to its original ancestry, the better the meat is going to be in flavor, texture, and aroma. If you have a factory turkey that can barely walk and is growing faster than normal, many of the nutritional things that happen in the muscle don’t happen. They’re not getting oxygen, they’re not getting mobility, they’re struggling to stay alive."
