How many of these tricky turkey tidbits did you know?
- When Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin sat down to eat their first meal on the moon, their foil food packets contained roasted turkey and all of the trimmings.
- While it’s possible the Pilgrims ate wild turkey during their feast, researchers don’t think they were a common food at the time. More likely venison was the main meat, and was accompanied by pheasant, goose and duck — and possibly even some pigeon and swan.
- The wild turkey is native to northern Mexico and the eastern United States.
- Turkey feathers were used to stabilize arrows and adorn Native American ceremonial dress, and the spurs on the legs of wild tom turkeys were used as projectiles on arrowheads.
- Turkey fossils have been unearthed across the southern United States and Mexico, some of them dating from more than 5 million years ago.
- Americans consume about 17.6 pounds of turkey per person every year, and the US produces nearly 6 billion pounds of turkey meat annually.
- In 2012, more than 210 million turkeys were consumed in the United States. About 46 million of those turkeys were eaten at Thanksgiving, 22 million at Christmas, and 19 million at Easter.
- Domesticated turkeys cannot fly.
- Wild turkeys can fly for short distances at speeds of up to 55 miles per hour, and can run 20 miles per hour.
- Male turkeys (toms) gobble, but hens do not. They make a clicking noise instead.
- A turkey typically has about 70 percent white meat and 30 percent dark meat.
- A baby turkey is called a poult, and is tan and brown.
- Turkey eggs are tan with brown specks and are larger than chicken eggs.
- The incubation period to hatch a turkey egg is 28 days.
- On average, it takes 75-80 pounds of feed (mostly corn and soybean-based) to raise a 30-pound tom turkey.
- In 2010, scientists announced that they had sequenced most of the genome for Meleagris gallopavo, the domesticated turkey. The map could help growers to more efficiently produce bigger, meatier turkeys.
- The top 5 turkey producing states (in 2012): Minnesota, North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri & Virginia.
- According to Guinness World Records, the world’s largest turkey farm belongs to Bernard Matthews plc, in Norfolk,England. They produce 1 million turkeys per year in a country that doesn’t even celebrate Thanksgiving.
- The long, red, fleshy growth from the base of the beak that hangs down over the beak is called the snood.
- A bright red appendage on a turkey’s neck is called the wattle.
- A large group of wild turkeys is called a flock, while a bunch of the domesticated birds are called rafter or gang. (Yes, a gang of turkeys.)
- Wild turkeys prefer to sleep in trees.
- America’s wild turkeys almost went extinct in 1930, due to the loss of their natural habitats and being over-hunted. Thanks to conservation and recovery efforts, there are now about seven million wild turkeys in North and Central America.
- The heaviest turkey ever raised was 86 pounds — which is about the size of a large dog.
- It’s estimated that a turkey has about 3,500 feathers at maturity.
- Frazee, Minnesota, is the “Home of the world’s largest turkey.” Not a living creature, it’s a roadside attraction that stands over 20 feet tall and is 17 feet wide. It weighs over 5,000 pounds and features more than 3,000 separate fiberglass feathers.
- Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the country’s official bird. Unhappy about the choice of the bald eagle, Franklin wrote, “For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America.”
Sources: USDA, National Turkey Federation, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Guinness World Records, United States Census Bureau, National Wildlife Federation, Minnesota Turkey Growers Association, US Geological Survey, Canadian Turkey Marketing Association