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Turkey Talk

Money…food…sex. Just a few highlights in a typical day in the life of our [other] state bird.

Photography by Adam Mastoon

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Big puffy chest, dim little brain, impressive plumage, and a seductive gobble that its Significant Other cannot resist.

As the holidays approach, it seems only appropriate to celebrate the season by paying tribute to that vision of poultry pulchritude, the Narragansett turkey.

Rhode Islanders, meet your bird.

“It was named after Narragansett Bay, where it was first developed,” says Marjorie Bender of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy in Pittsboro, North Carolina. “That’s not that unusual. A lot of breeds are named after places.”

The Narragansett may be proudly ours, but finding one isn’t easy, even in its home state. Local agriculture officials list several turkey farms in Rhode Island but none sell Narragansetts to the public. Officials at Swiss Village Farm in Newport, which protects rare and endangered breeds, say they used to have Narragansetts but eventually gave them to a couple of the state’s historic farms. One, Casey Farm in North Kingstown, reports that its turkeys met their demise in a coyote encounter.

Don Minto of the historic Watson Farm in Jamestown says he doesn’t grow turkeys for sale but has several Narragansetts that he shows off to visitors. He invited me out one day to take a gander.

Owned by the nonprofit Historic New England, the 285-acre working farm features open pastures bordered by ancient stone walls and is close to the rocky shoreline of Narragansett Bay. Minto takes me to the old wooden barn, with antique tools and a large nineteenth-century sleigh suspended in the rafters. Three Narragansett hens peck and scratch along one bay.

Looking at them, you could understand why Benjamin Franklin suggested that the turkey would be a better American icon than the eagle. These birds have a definite fashion sense. Plump with a rear fantail of feathers in white, black, bronze and gray, what especially stands out is their red neck, which turns to bluish white on the head.

Raising turkeys is difficult, Minto says. The hens produce eggs, but coyotes find the nests before the chicks can hatch. Then last winter, a small tragedy occurred when Minto lost his Tom in an unfortunate traffic accident.

Once there were thousands of these birds in Rhode Island and far more elsewhere. When the American Poultry Association recognized it as one of the preeminent breeds in the country in 1874, it was not unusual to find flocks of up to 200 being raised for sale along with a dozen hens for breeding. The birds were self-sufficient, gobbling up a diet of grasshoppers and other insects. They were the perfect centerpiece for the holiday that had been recognized by Abraham Lincoln.

And then the breed almost disappeared. By 1997, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy—which works to protect endangered animal breeds and takes periodic censuses of these breeds—could find only six.

Blame it on our love for big breasts.

Another breed called the Bronze had long been the most popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the last fifty years, commercial farming interests developed a version of the Bronze, first called the Broad Breasted Bronze and later the Broad Breasted White. These modern birds win the Dolly Parton award for their plentiful buildup of breast meat that many Americans favor. On the other hand, BBBs and the BBWs have other distinctions that commercial farmers don’t want to brag about. Breeders have shortened the legs of the birds so much that it is impossible for them to mate. Instead, all hens are artificially inseminated. They are prone to disease and are sometimes fed antibiotics. In addition, most spend their entire life indoors; the saying that today’s turkeys would drown in the rain is no joke.

Still, they have proved popular for both farmers and consumers because the modern breeds mature in four to five months, as opposed to the eight or nine months it takes the older breeds, a handicap for farmers strapped for time and money. “I can see why they fell out of favor in the commercial world,” Minto says.

It’s a shame, because the Narragansett has a rich history. Turkeys are indigenous to the Americas and it was the Aztecs and others who first domesticated them. When the Spanish arrived in Mexico and Central America, they were amazed by this bird, which could rapidly grow from a small chick into a meal that could feed more than a dozen at a sitting.

Spanish explorers brought the turkey back to Europe as part of their booty and soon merchants were hawking domesticated versions of the American variety across the continent. Different breeds developed, including one in England called the Norfolk Black.

The Pilgrims brought that bird to New England in the 1600s. The area was rife with wild turkeys—as it still is. At some point, a creative resident introduced the wild ones that hung around Narragansett Bay to the domesticated Norfolk Black. Nature took its course, and the new generation became the Narragansett. The breed is one of thirteen identified by the Conservancy, with the others bearing names that sound like professional wrestlers: Jersey Buff, Midget White, Bourbon Red, Royal Palm and the Bronze.