Turkey Thy Name Is Dinner

We butchered Christmas today. He was supposed to have been butchered by Christmas but we were too busy. To butcher that bird, I needed a whole day... and help.

Today, help arrived but they didn't know they were help when they arrived. Truth be told, I didn't know we would be butchering the bird today.

A word about the bird. The turkey was the last one of four. Two were killed by our dog and another was killed in the night by what we think was a fox. Christmas was our last bird standing. He lived with our chickens and was free to walk about and live and grow. And grow he did. He was massive. We guessed that he weighed forty or fifty pounds and would give us a nice, 30 pound carcass after he was plucked and cleaned.

My husband had decided to go on a hike today with some of his brothers and nephews, a dude hike. Everyone met at our house. My brother and his family also stopped in. Perfect day for a turkey kill. The dudes gamely gathered the materials - ax, machete, knives, garbage cans, a table and a cutting board.

The plan was for two able bodied men to carry the turkey to the chopping block. John and my brother went into the coop to get the bird. He (the bird) resisted. They called an audible and brought the killing equipment into the coop. The chickens went CRAZY. They flapped and jumped and squawked. The turkey wasn't happy but we moved quickly.

The first cut didn't kill the bird. In fact, he got away and had to be caught again. The second cut was the kill cut. It was messy and difficult and I think a bit shocking to all of us. Chickens are much, much easier to kill. But don't despair if you have turkeys, ours was abnormally large and I'll get to that in a minute.

After the bird was killed, one of the men attempted to pick it up. To his surprise, he discovered that it couldn't be easily lifted. Another man helped and they stumbled out of the coop with the heavy body over to a tree where they tied the bird upside down to bleed out.

The plucking started right away. It was a comedy of errors only outdone by comedy of errors involving the gutting. It took close to two hours to pluck most of the feathers - not all but most. We were losing daylight and had to keep moving.

To say "Then my brother and I gutted the turkey" would be a nice segue but it wasn't that easy. We untied his feet from the tree where he was suspended and moved him to a "bowl" made by lining a hard plastic spare tire cover with a trash bag. (By spare tire cover I mean one for a truck). Think big. That took another hour and a half because the bird was too heavy for either one of us to easily move. It's not normally like this for professionals. I have little experience and am totally paranoid about getting the gallbladder out intact. (It contains this nasty green liquid that if spilled into the cavity of the animal will ruin the taste of anything it touches.)

It took two of us to move the bird, even after it was plucked and cleaned. It barely fit into my gargantuan kitchen sink. I had no pans big enough to hold it.

We used a bathroom scale to weigh the turkey after all was said and done. Turns out the turkey was slightly bigger than our previous guess of 30 pounds after processing.

He is actually 60 pounds.

That SIX ZERO.

Imagine lifting a 60 pound bird into your cart at the store. 20 pounds is big. This one is just huge. We don't know how we're going to prepare it. It won't fit into the oven. Maybe we'll cook it in a pit or over a spit but we're still looking for options.

I'm really excited that we got it done. I'm never going to let another turkey live this long again.

FWIW the largest turkey on record (that I can find) was 86 pounds - alive. Most turkeys weigh between 12-25 pounds after they are processed. The largest wild turkey on record was 37 pounds. Our turkey weighed as much alive as a large breed dog. And this is why he was so difficult and time consuming to kill and process today.