THE TURKEY

45 million turkeys are cooked and eaten in the U.S. at Thanksgiving

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Benjamin Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey.

If he had succeeded we could be eating Bald Eagle instead of Turkey.

Turkeys have great hearing, but no external ears. The fleshy growth from the base of the beak is called the snood?

Turkey eggs are a pale creamy color with tan spotsThey hatch after 28 days of incubation. A baby turkey is called a poult.

Turkeys spend the night in trees. They fly to their roosts around sunset. Turkeys fly to the ground at first light and feed until mid-morning. Feeding resumes in mid-afternoon. Gobbling starts before sunrise and can continue through most of the morning.

Only male turkeys make the familiar “gobbling” sound? (Female turkeys make a clicking noise.)

Turkeys can have heart attacks. On one occasion the Air Force was conducting test runs and breaking the sound barrier. Fields of turkeys dropped dead from heart attacks.

A wild turkey has excellent vision and hearing. Their field of vision is about 270 degrees. This is the main reason they continue to elude some hunters.

Mature turkeys have 3,500 or so feathers at maturity.

The greatest dressed weight recorded for a turkey is 39.09 kg (86 lb) He was a stag named Tyson reared by Philip Cook of Leacroft Turkeys Ltd, Peterborough, United Kingdom. It won the last annual 'heaviest turkey' competition, held in London on 12 December 1989, and was auctioned for charity for a record £4400 (then $6,692)

A spooked turkey can run at speeds up to 20 miles per hour. They can also burst into flight approaching speeds between 50-55 mph in a matter of seconds.

Turkeys are able to adapt to a wide variety of habitats but most turkeys are found in hardwood forests with grassy areas.

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln, declared the last Thursday in November to be a national holiday… Thanksgiving. Franklin Roosevelt later changed it to the third Thursday in November so that there would be a bigger space between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING