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Show - ... ' - ... ' ' ' 'j . . SAD THANKSGIVING turkey stops a moment to but soon to be enjoyed, it plays and essential ponder its up coming fate soon to be plucked, part to the Thanksgiving feast. Straight talk about turkeys By Sieven Wallis .News Kditor Vernal Kxpre.ss Turkeys are dumb birds. They will pile on each other and suffocate suf-focate trying to hide when they are frightened. During a rain storm, they will look up in astonishment, mouths open, and drown. Hens can't remember to squat when laying eggs, so there is a loss of eggs when they hit the ground. But despite their dumbness, many turkeys will be invited to dinner in millions of American homes during the holiday season. Anyone who has driven through southern Utah knows that turkeys are more than a Thanksgiving feast to farmers in that area they are a way of life. Moroni, Utah, is the center of Utah's turkey industry. Over two million turkeys, raised in Sanpete County, are brought to Moroni Feed Cooperative for processing. The poults or baby turkeys, are hatched hat-ched in special hatcheries in St. George. They are purchased by farmers in the Sanpete area and are raised until they are ready to be killed, about 21 months. Some farmers will raise up to a hundred thousand turkeys. During the time that the turkeys are poults they are treated almost as well as humans. It takes five pounds of grain to produce one pound of turkey, which is little compared to 12 to 13 pounds of grain per pound of beef. During the Thanksgiving season, fresh turkeys are in great demand, but the gobbler has more to offer the consumer con-sumer than what most people see on Thanksgiving. Steaks, hot dogs, salami, corn dogs, sausage, ham and bologna are all processed pro-cessed from turkey at the Moroni Feed Cooperative. More than 50 percent of the turkeys processed are cut up and used for other products other than whole turkeys. A turkey has one-third less fat and are high in protein. Note that turkeys have not always been considered dumb. Before turkeys became a Thanksgiving Thanksgiv-ing tradition, wild turkeys were very prevalent in North and Central America. Turkeys were raised in large numbers in the Mexican states and were used as gifts to their gods. Benjamin Franklin favored the turkey over the bald eagle as a national emblem, because it was respectable and a native of America. "For my part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly. ..(but) it would have been highly incongruous to have selected a bird with so foreign a name as turkey." The bird was first called turkey because it was thought to have come from Turkey. Other sources say the name came from the fact that to the early colonists, the. turkey's gobble sounded like truk, truk, truk. How the turkey got his name has little to do with the meaning of the word today. to-day. The word "turkey" means a showbiz flop, a useless thing or person, or a fake drug. To "talk turkey" means to get down to business. People go through "cold turkey," when they withdraw from drugs without help and all at once. A turkey in bowling is three consecutive strikes. Whatever meaning the word has, turkey still means a good Thanksgiving meal to millions of Americans. |