Photo by Regina Boling
A three-month-old Bourbon Red struts his stuff in the mountains of Far West Texas.
HERITAGE TURKEYS
To eat them is to save them
by Sandra Harper
W
hile “long lived, naturally
mating and slow growing”
would partially define the
human animal, it’s also a description of
the heritage turkey. Add to these criteria
“raised outside in a historic range sys-
tem,” and you have a description of the
heritage turkey breeds recognized today
by the American Poultry Association.
Like other native American foods – the
tomato, the potato, the squash and the
pepper – the turkey traveled around the
world for about 90 years before being
carried back to North America in 1607
in the holds of ships by European
colonists to the settlement at Jamestown.
Fast forward to 2010 in the Big Bend
10
of Texas. Since late spring, 19 heritage
turkeys have been living happily in the
pens and fields of Regina Boling’s small
farm on the southeast edge of Alpine.
Regina, a vivacious, fair-headed woman
who seems to never stop working – a
prerequisite for a farmer – started rais-
ing chickens a few years ago and has
eggs galore that she sells at the Alpine
Farmers’ Market.
In May she received a different kind
of poultry from the supplier of her
chicks – several mailing boxes of two-
day-old heritage turkeys. She had
ordered Naragansetts, bourbon reds,
chocolates and blue slates – all turkey
breeds that were on the critical, threat-
Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2010
ened or watch lists of the American
Livestock Breeds Conservancy.
This once popular domesticated
farm animal was driven to near extinc-
tion by the rise of the broad breasted
white, which from the 1940s to 70s was
the most highly-engineered industrial
breed in the world. Bred to be fat and
large-breasted, their tiny legs were so
shortened by the commercial breeding
program it was impossible for them to
mate or even stand. Only white birds
were selectively chosen to assure that no
shopper would find a carcass dotted
with off-putting dark pinfeathers. The
shrinking gene pool produced brain-
damaged and diseased turkeys in need
of antibiotics. Mercifully, at the age of
12 weeks they would be slaughtered.
The white miracle-of-science bird spent
its short, miserable life crammed into a
shed with thousands of others just like it.
One of the outcomes of agribusiness
is the destruction of diversity. Successful
at eliminating the competition, generat-
ing enormous profits and, they would
argue, feeding more people, industrial
food producers have destroyed many,
perhaps even most, of the plants and
animals native to the planet.
Beginning in the 1950s, George
Nicholas’ broad-breasted white scientific
creation began to take over the turkey
market and insert itself at the center of
every Thanksgiving and Christmas meal
and deli counter across the country.
Today the turkey industry has consol-
idated into three corporations that con-
trol the breeding stock: Hybrid Turkeys
of Ontario, Canada; British United
Turkeys of America in Lewisburg, W.
Va.; and Nicholas Turkey Breeding
Farms in Sonoma, Calif.
Even the agro-deformed broad-
breasted white shared a common ances-
tor with the heritage breeds: the wild
turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, native to North
and South America .
Two thousand years ago early
Mesoamericans and the Hopi domesti-
cated the wild turkey, a 10-million-year-
old bird whose poults fattened on insects
and chased lizards. Growing turkeys in
the Rio Grande region ate acorns, prick-
ly pear, persimmons, berries of the agar-
ito and the hackberry and mesquite
beans. This West Texas forage diet
made for a delicious wild-tasting bird.
THE NATURAL LIFE
OF A HERITAGE TURKEY
Since 1977 the American Livestock
Breeds Conservancy (ALBC) has been
the pioneer in the United States working
to conserve historic breeds and genetic
diversity in farm animals. “Keep them
on the foot and on the hoof,” declared
Marjorie Bender, who leads the ALBC’s
heritage turkey conservation efforts.
The heritage turkey census in 1997
counted only 1,500 birds. By 2006 that
number had grown to over 10,000, a
rise that had been brought about by the
conservation efforts of ALBC, Slow
Food and farmers who raised the birds
for market. “To eat them is to save
them,” Bender and her allies taught us.
“Staying connected to the past gives
us opportunities for the future,” Bender
said enthusiastically on Kate Man -
chester’s radio show, “Edible Com -
munities.” As Americans have grown
more interested in where their food
comes from and how it is produced, far -
mers have brought the heritage turkeys
back into food production and saved
them from extinction. Raising the birds
locally has linked them intimately to the
community and to the environment.
In West Texas, the heritage turkey
farmers are few and far between. The
farmers who would be inclined to raise
the birds already raise chickens. Because
of blackhead, a protozoal disease some-
times contracted by chickens, agricultur-
al extension agents have advised against
allowing the fowl breeds to mingle.
Keeping the two separate translates into
more work for the farmer.
But the prospect of extra work and
the fear of blackhead did not deter our
local turkey farmer. Regina has settled
on a flat dusty piece of land exposed to
the sun. She gardens around her house
where the chickens and turkeys live, and
in her vegetable garden she always grows
more than she needs to feed them.
When I visited Regina, her turkey poults
were 2 weeks old and living in a space
just off her kitchen. “They peep the
same as chicks,” she said, “but their
necks are longer, their feet are bigger,
and they have bumps on their heads.”
The fleshy protuberance atop their beak
is called a snood.
The poults were milling around in -
side a cardboard box originally made to
contain a recliner chair. A red heat lamp
kept them warm. Hilde, Regina’s
schnauzer, jumped on to her perch, a
chair next to the box, and hung her
head inside, watching the poults’ move-
ments. Already the poults were used to
the dog. Nearly every one of them was
focused on Regina’s voice and kept their
eyes trained on her.
“I can tell they’re more curious than
chickens,” Regina said. She grabbed
one up and spread its wings, which were