Turkey supply very high this year?

[Paranoid]

It seems that even with the raised prices on everything due to gas, turkeys are extremely cheap this year.

I'm probably gonna go out tomorrow and check for any further reduced prices and pick a couple more up for deep storage.

[whodunit]

I thought about doing this, too, with turkey here at 79 cents a pound (I've heard even cheaper elsewhere).

On the negative side, my DW and MIL say that turkey easily frostbites and doesn't keep well. Any experience with this?

One option I thought about was cooking it, deboning, using the carcass for soup, then vacuum-packing all the cooked meat. It can then be used for various dishes.

Any thoughts?

[Paranoid]

turkeys come vacuum sealed if you get the frozen ones, i cant imagine how it could possibly get frostbite, frostbite is a problem with living entities, once it's dead i think they are referring to "freezer burn" and since that is nothing more than a dehydrated portion of meat i dont see how it would be possible as the turkey is sealed in heavy plastic and unable to dehydrate.

[ThreeJane]

29 cents a pound at the local albertsons if you buy $25 or more in groceries (and who doesn't before Thanksgiving?)

This is my first year makin' a turkey, wish me luck. I've always been lucky and eaten Thanksgiving elsewhere; this year, we're having turkey today, tomorrow AND Sunday. I'm having MORE T'giving turkey up in North Idaho, where I have minimal friends and NO family than I ever did in SoCal. Go figure.

[ladycat]

Got one for 38c a pound with $10 purchase, my grocery list was over $10 so no problem. Not for Thanksgiving, nobody to cook for but me, but 38c/lb is cheap meat.

Wish I could have gotten an organic one, but they're $2.50/lb and I can't swing that quite yet.

[Cyngbaeld]

From what I've heard the stores actually sell the turkeys below cost as a loss leader. Organic producers can't afford to do that. Poults cost about 6 to 8 bucks a piece, then you nearly always lose some of them, then you have the expense of raising them. Turks eat a lot!

[Paranoid]

yeah there is no way for the little guy to compete.

however, faced with the rising cost of protein when i see something 57 cents or less for good meat, not "questionable body parts", i am all over the deal.

[Cyngbaeld]

Sure, if it is something you will eat. The store birds nearly always are injected with 'broth' these days. MSG and who knows what. I won't eat them myself. LOL

[Bluecreekrog]

Not to hijack the thread but, would $1.79 a lb be profitable? Thats what fresh, never frozen turkey is selling for at a poultry farm nearby.

[TnAndy]

No wonder they are so cheap.....wandering around everywhere in my front yard.

I'll shoot 'em if you'll pluck 'em.

[Pony]

Follow the link to the whole story.
http://tinyurl.com/dpja2

One for 'The Birds': Wild turkeys attack people

By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
The Wall Street Journal
Published November 23, 2005, 10:40 AM CST

As Americans prepare to eat some 46 million domestic turkeys slaughtered for Thanksgiving, their wild cousins are fighting back. The explosion of the wild-turkey population to nearly seven million from just 30,000 in the 1930s has put a growing number of humans in the face of angry gobblers.

Patricia Huckery, a Massachusetts Wildlife Department district manager in Acton, west of Boston, says she has gotten 25 calls this year for advice on coping with aggressive turkeys. Last year in Cranford, N.J., a letter carrier killed a turkey with a stick after complaining to police that a flock of turkeys wouldn't let him out of his delivery truck. In Pennsylvania's Montgomery County, wildlife conservation officer Chris Heil says he has had to kill 42 turkeys this year in response to complaints about behavior ranging from attacking a child on a tricycle to scratching cars.

Last month, jogging on a back road in Massachusetts' Berkshire hills, Betsy Kosheff passed a farmers' field where farm-raised wild turkeys were pecking for grain. Suddenly about 30 of them took off after Ms. Kosheff, who has a public-relations firm in West Stockbridge, Mass.

"It was like that scene in 'The Birds' except there was no phone booth," says Ms. Kosheff, referring to the famous refuge in the Alfred Hitchcock movie. A passing friend stopped her pickup truck and Ms. Kosheff ran around it several times. The turkeys kept up the chase, although she says "they were too stupid to split up or change directions" to trap her. Finally, Ms. Kosheff got in the truck, where, she says, her friend "was laughing so hard she almost choked on her Dunkin' Donut."



Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

[mightybooboo]

Pony,sounds like those 'gangbanger' squirrels I have here.I had one up in a pinetree and the little bugger was throwing pine cones at me!

Another time they blocked off the road heading down the mountain!

Yep,theyre fighting back,yes indeedy!

BooBoo

[Cyngbaeld]

Originally Posted by Bluecreekrog

Not to hijack the thread but, would $1.79 a lb be profitable? Thats what fresh, never frozen turkey is selling for at a poultry farm nearby.

Really depends on what the farm's costs were. But I'd say it is a good buy.

[whodunit]

Originally Posted by Paranoid

turkeys come vacuum sealed if you get the frozen ones, i cant imagine how it could possibly get frostbite, frostbite is a problem with living entities, once it's dead i think they are referring to "freezer burn" and since that is nothing more than a dehydrated portion of meat i dont see how it would be possible as the turkey is sealed in heavy plastic and unable to dehydrate.

Yup, meant "freezer burn". The plastic surrounding a typical store bought turkey is vacuum sealed?

[lewbest]

I haven't done it in recent years but used to buy several when stores had them real cheap before thanksgiving & eat them through out the year; always were good even after months of staying frozen in original package.

Lew

[Paranoid]

i cant speak for your stores, likely they use a different meat packing plant then mine. but the 3 i have seen so far this year were sealed in high gauge plastic.

[Grandmotherbear]

Yes, they are great at other times of the year also. I would roast a small one, freeze half the meat and use the other half for several days menus.

[ellebeaux]

Turkeys were $0.19/pound at Harris-Teeter here (dumb name for a grocery, I think). I'm going to cook up and freeze another one since I didn't get to keep the carcass this year. I need my turkey barley soup!

[mistletoad]

We paid $1.79 at the local butcher for a fresh (ie no "broth") turkey. They could give away the frozen ones and we still wouldn't eat it. Next year I think we will raise our own or call the organic farm a bit earlier - tried to order in October and it was already too late.

[sullen]

Originally Posted by Cyngbaeld

Sure, if it is something you will eat. The store birds nearly always are injected with 'broth' these days. MSG and who knows what. I won't eat them myself. LOL

I am with you, Cy. I still have the one DH's job gave us last year.
On the otherside, the ones we grew were delicious, DH figured they were a little over $1.00 a lb to raise.