page_title: Poultry
section_title: Turkeys
hierarchical_section_title: Poultry / Turkeys
caption_attribution_description: English: A picture taken of a Turkey.
context_page_description: Poultry are domesticated birds kept by humans for their eggs, their meat or their feathers. These birds are most typically members of the superorder Galloanserae, especially the order Galliformes.
  Poultry also includes other birds that are killed for their meat, such as the young of pigeons but does not include similar wild birds hunted for sport or food and known as game. The word "poultry" comes from the French/Norman word poule, itself derived from the Latin word pullus, which means small animal.
  The domestication of poultry took place several thousand years ago. This may have originally been as a result of people hatching and rearing young birds from eggs collected from the wild, but later involved keeping the birds permanently in captivity. Domesticated chickens may have been used for cockfighting at first and quail kept for their songs, but soon it was realised how useful it was having a captive-bred source of food.
  Selective breeding for fast growth, egg-laying ability, conformation, plumage and docility took place over the centuries, and modern breeds often look very different from their wild ancestors.
context_section_description: Turkeys are large birds, their nearest relatives being the pheasant and the guineafowl. Males are larger than females and have spreading, fan-shaped tails and distinctive, fleshy wattles, called a snood, that hang from the top of the beak and are used in courtship display. Wild turkeys can fly, but seldom do so, preferring to run with a long, straddling gait. They roost in trees and forage on the ground, feeding on seeds, nuts, berries, grass, foliage, invertebrates, lizards, and small snakes.
  The modern domesticated turkey is descended from one of six subspecies of wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) found in the present Mexican states of Jalisco, Guerrero and Veracruz.  Pre-Aztec tribes in south-central Mexico first domesticated the bird around 800 BC, and Pueblo Indians inhabiting the Colorado Plateau in the United States did likewise around 200 BC. They used the feathers for robes, blankets, and ceremonial purposes.  More than 1,000 years later, they became an important food source.  The first Europeans to encounter the bird misidentified it as a guineafowl, a bird known as a "turkey fowl" at that time because it had been introduced into Europe via Turkey.
  Commercial turkeys are usually reared indoors under controlled conditions. These are often large buildings, purpose-built to provide ventilation and low light intensities (this reduces the birds' activity and thereby increases the rate of weight gain).  The lights can be switched on for 24-hrs/day, or a range of step-wise light regimens to encourage the birds to feed often and therefore grow rapidly. Females achieve slaughter weight at about 15 weeks of age and males at about 19. Mature commercial birds may be twice as heavy as their wild counterparts. Many different breeds have been developed, but the majority of commercial birds are white, as this improves the appearance of the dressed carcass, the pin feathers being less visible. Turkeys were at one time mainly consumed on special occasions such as Christmas (10 million birds in the United Kingdom) or Thanksgiving (60 million birds in the United States). However, they are increasingly becoming part of the everyday diet in many parts of the world.
caption: Male domesticated turkey sexually displaying by showing the snood hanging over the beak, the caruncles hanging from the throat, and the 'beard' of small, black, stiff feathers on the chest
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