Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Turkeys! Again!

Franny
Another true story: This is what turkeys should look like!

White is an aberration. It is a genetic mutation that sometimes occurs in wild turkeys. Those wild turkeys rarely make it to breeding age, because hello! being white in the middle of the open plains and green/brown forests is a pretty poor survival technique.

Franny isn't a wild turkey, by the way. She is a single-breasted bronze turkey. Modern production turkeys - the animals people eat - are double-breasted. They cannot fly, perch, mate naturally, nor can they be fed a normal diet. Franny is lucky - she can express all the natural behaviors that our white-breasted turkeys desire but physically can't.

Why are turkeys white? Because people didn't like the bronze colored markings on turkey flesh. So turkey farmers took advantage of a genetic mutation that serves no survival purpose and artificially selected for white turkeys who get morbidly obese fast.

Franny is also a fan of photographs. This is just fact. When she saw me wander out to the pasture to take some photos of the chickens, she followed and planted herself in front of my camera. Then she basically yelled at me the whole time. Rude!

No comments: