Turkey For Dinner

Warning:  This blog deals with killing and dressing a turkey - some pictures and other parts may be upsetting to some people.

Since we got our 16 turkeys, the plan has always been to eat most of the boys.  I've been making enquiries about swapping a couple of boys with someone else so I can have some that are unrelated to mine, but the person I was talking to is overseas on holiday at the moment so that's all on hold.

The need to thin out the ranks has become more obvious lately as it's the start of their breeding season.  There were two of the smaller boys spending most of their time hiding in the house and their normally bright faces were blackened - I don't know if that was bruising or because they'd had their faces in the dirt often.  They were consistently chased away from food and from the rest of the flock.  There is always a layer of feathers, mostly tail feathers, on the grass in their pen.

I've heard lots of varying ideas, stories and opinions about killing a turkey.  Most seem to go with breaking their neck, either by the picking them up by their neck and sharply swinging the bird, or by holding the bird by it's feet, pulling the head down at an angle sharply.  The other method I'd had recommended is to cut it's head off, although after watching an episode of something on tv where the guy who did that had his stomach cut to ribbons by the thrashing around that immediately follows, I was wary of this and had a plan if this did become the way we did it.

Several times over the last two weeks, I've geared myself up to go and kill a turkey.  I've never actually directly killed anything bigger than an insect before.  That's not true, I've been fishing, and held the salmon I caught while it was hit on the head with a hammer.  But I wasn't sure if I could do it.  I'm fine watching someone else do it, I'm fine with the thought of doing it, but doing it myself is a different thing and I believe you never really know until you're there doing it.

The turkeys are brave enough around me to stick their heads into the bucket of food I'm holding when I go into their run, but I haven't been quick enough to get them, perhaps that was some of my hesitation about having the nerve to do it, perhaps it was fear of doing it badly or perhaps it was fear of getting hurt by them.  I've been hit in the face by a wing and that hurt me, if there were flying feet (which are big and sharp and pointy by the way), it could be very messy.

Yesterday, hubby came with me to feed them.  I suggested turkey for Father's Day dinner tonight.  My parents are coming out for dinner, so it could be a point of pride for me to be serving one of our turkeys that we'd processed.  Catching one was the first problem.

Eventually, we herded one into their little house.  We caught him, but it turns out that breaking their neck is not the simple or easy process it's usually been described as.  I think in the end, we broke his neck, but it didn't kill him.  He was still gasping and blinking and we had a very subdued and silent walk up to the house to chop his head off as quickly as we could.  We were both feeling rather cruel in that we'd obviously incapacitated him, but not killed him quickly or cleanly.

I tied his feet to reduce the ability to thrash and potentially injure one of us and we laid him out on a large flat tree stump.  Hubby wielded the axe and my best laid plans of lifting the rope I'd tied his feet by so he'd be thrashing around in mid air proved impractical.  I couldn't hold the rope, I'm just not strong enough to hold on to that while a large bird flaps and thrashes.

The books I have giving practical tips on plucking and dressing recommended scalding birds in a large water bath at about 80 degrees C.  Finding something big enough to contain this bird was difficult, I wasn't going to bring him inside and use a bathtub.  A 60l crate did the job, but it took a bit of moving and rearranging to get all of him underwater.

One large headless turkey awaiting plucking

Then I started plucking.  Most of the feathers came out easily enough.  It reminded me of waxing, hold the skin fairly tight and pull against the direction of growth.  The wing feathers were something else though.  Each feather took a lot of strength to pull out and several times I broke the spine of the feather off rather than pulled it out.  A pair of long nose pliers took care of that eventually.  After about an hour and a half I had all but a few small fine feathers left to do.  Miss Ten got excited and helped me for a while, then her gloves got some holes in them and she didn't want to do it anymore.

Partially plucked turkey with Miss Ten's help.

Fully plucked - well except for some of the small fine feathers.

Gutting was not what I expected.  Bits were easy, but I tore the gullet and spent a bit of time washing fine grains of mash and grass out of the neck.  I also tore a small hole in the tract between intestine and vent and spent even longer washing that off - in the end I cut out the bits that had been in contact with it.

After probably three hours, I had a plucked, dressed and very well washed turkey.  Dressed weight is 12kg, it's a little bit too big for my largest roasting dish, but hopefully it'll shrink a little in the cooking.

Ready for stuffing, trussing and roasting.