Thanksgiving is just around the corner.

Many of our customers and viewers do not know that we are also a working Turkey farm. We have spent the last couple of years getting our flock together and improving the size and quality of our turkeys. Most of the turkeys found in Thailand are true Thai turkeys that have only a single breast lobe. The average Thai turkey looks a bit like a torpedo. The western breed of turkeys are double breasted which produces a much larger bird with about 90% more meat. The problem with western turkeys is that they get so large that they cannot mate and often have heart attacks while trying to mate. In addition, they are highly susceptible to disease and extreme heat and dampness that we experience in Thailand. Believe me when I say it is extremely difficult to rear a turkey to full size. I would put local survival rates at 50-60%. That is another reason that turkey meat is so expensive in Thailand. Mosquitoes and rats are the biggest threat to Turkey’s health. They both pose deadly results when they ( mosquitoes ) bite a turkey, and rats carry diseases in their excrement that turkeys ingest giving them diseases like mycoplasma. Most turkeys affected by either of these will not survive more than a few days. We all know how bad the mosquitoes are here in Thailand, which is the main killer of Turkeys. So with a little luck and a few prayers and help from some expert Turkey farmers, we have been able to raise about 30-40 turkeys each year. We sell most of them at each year’s end for Thanksgiving and Christmas for expats living in Thailand. The rest we use to produce our famous Turkey sausage. As far as we know we are the only business making Turkey sausage in Thailand. It is truly a healthy and tasty sausage. We also have these available to ship out nationwide via our website. The Turkeys are quirky birds and over the course of the year, we do grow attached to them on our farm. As I write this we have about 40 turkey eggs in our incubator getting ready for next year’s group. We are primarily a Turkey and Guinea farm. I will write about Guineas in a future blog. Until next time, be kind to one another and smile!