Thanksgiving Turkey 2024 Report

Compared to 22 and 23, 2024 Turkey Harvest was disastrous. In 2024, we decided to do a Corn and Soy free bird vice the regular Non-GMO bird we had done in previous years.

The sweet spot on harvest timing for Non-GMO birds is 13 and 14 weeks. Birds are not too big, easy to handle and easy to pluck and come out beautiful.

2024 birds were 17 weeks old. I let them live an additional 3 weeks thinking we needed that time for soy free bird to reach weight. I was wrong.

What happened

1. Birds were way too hard to pluck and we could not find a temp that released feather without tearing skin.
2. We were 20 of 75 birds into the harvest and had not produced a single bird worthy of a table. We got nervous.
3. Birds were too big to pluck in pairs like we normally do. And we were still tearing skin. Eventually, we backed off the temp and accepted more hand plucking to get the number of birds we needed. We also plucked one at a time.

Lessons Learned:

1. Range of 17 week old birds is 18-29 lbs.
2. 75 birds in a day is too much. I think about 30-40 is the right number.
3. In the future kill at 12, 13 and 14 weeks only to get a good array of weights from lower teens to lower 20s.
4. Never kill older than 14 weeks. Keep temp same as chickens (145-152), bump up scald time to 1.5.
5. QAQC lady comes half hour early to start selecting table birds.
6. Outside crew needs minimum of 3 men, 4 preferred. 3 to catch, cone and kill and one man dedicated to pucker, feet off and scalder.
7. Inside evisceration needs min of 2, 3 preferred. One on pre-evis, 1-2 on the table. 
8. Start killing At 0530, finished by 0830-0900, transition to butchery and whole bird final inspection and chill . Done by lunch.
9. Do not bag table birds the same day, use 2023 model and dry age in the True Cooler. Bag the next day with Value-add team.
10. On whole birds. Caution on shrink wrap bags and birds over 20 pounds. The bag broke on 3 birds resulting in a significant loss in table birds. Air hole technique does not work on turkey, use straw method.
11. A young Man needs to be allocated to whole bird girls, so they do not have to do all that lifting.

What we will do in 2025

1. We will not do pre orders.     
2. We will do several small batches (~35-40 birds) leading up to November and at a predetermined and advertised date – announce them on sale. Ie : 16 x small birds weights 10-12 lbs,  22 x medium birds 13-17 lbs and 11 large birds 18-24 lbs.  
3. We will kill in October, some at 12, some at 13 and the rest at 14 weeks.
4. Clean room guidance is: Select only the prettiest for table birds and if the bird does not cut it, it gets butchered for grind. No stress trying to get table birds – if it is pretty, it passes. If it not it doesn’t.
5. By late October we will have a good supply of table birds with known ranges of weights. These birds will be announced for sale on a predetermined day and marketed as such.

** Addition of a cooking report - post Thanksgiving.  first - it was delicious . flavorful and juicy. for cooking : So the USDA recommended 5.5 hours to cook an unstuffed 25 pound bird, I gave it another hour to be safe. What I found was it actually needed about another 1.5 hours on top of the additional hour. So i guess the lesson here is USDA recommendations shoot behind the duck alittle  -  so I recalcualated USDAs 13 minute per pound recommendation and it turns out it is closer to 19 minutes per pound for an oven that gets opened a couple of times for other things. Hope helful

End report