Given a clear run and all things favourable, even the best laid plans can be challenged as turkeys develop.
At the start of the season, producers need to source a selection of day-old poults so they can deliver a spread of bird weights to match a predicted orderbook. Given recent years, predicting what customers want and where at Christmas is not a precise science, and farmers need to hope that their spread of available weights will find a home for every bird.
Producers will generally try to keep their poults a single age to best manage age related health challenges, changing housing and environment requirements as the birds grow and develop feather cover. However, there are factors that can alter the target weight for age profile, which can make things more complicated.
We’ve recently had AI to contend with – and the possibility of being able to freeze birds killed in a safer growing season to sell at Christmas as either frozen or defrosted. This may result in the desire to grow birds as fast as possible, to get the finished product safely locked away from any possible disease threat.
There’s also climate to consider, which is another challenge and can interfere with healthy growth and development. We have traditionally enjoyed crisp autumnal mornings, cold and bright that well-developed, feathered turkeys thrive in with a healthy appetite. Turkeys naturally eat well and deposit an attractive layer of fat under the skin, which when chilled, presents as a clean white skin. With the effects of climate change, milder autumns can depress their appetite and the birds may not get the same calorie intake to drive the desired amount of fat deposition. A bird without “finish” doesn’t present as such an attractive carcass as the flesh colour is visible through the skin.
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