What's Inside Your Thanksgiving Turkey? - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 1999

When you're gobbling turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, you might wonder what the bird itself has eaten for dinner. If the farm-reared, supermarket variety, it has likely had a nutritious, computer-formulated ration of corn, soybeans, vitamins, and minerals. Those good diets make turkeys super-efficient converters of feed into meat--gaining a pound for about every two and a half pounds of feed, notes Jeff Firman, a University of Missouri-Columbia poultry scientist.

Meanwhile, wild turkeys eat whatever they can get their beaks on. "Wild turkeys instinctively balance their diets," he says. Domesticated turkeys are not totally inept in this area either. "The domestic turkey, as dumb as it's supposed to be, also will balance its own diet if given the opportunity to choose among a variety of foods."

The average tom turkey reaches the market weighing between 23 and 35 pounds. The average weight of a hen ranges from 12 to 15 pounds. In terms of sale and consumption, tom turkeys have more breast meat, but hens are more popular. "Toms are bigger, so they have more meat on their bones. But the hens have a more desirable size for roasting, and their conformation is excellent."