This Thanksgiving, Give Thanks to Those Few, Hardy Northwest Turkey Farmers

Anna King
11/23/2009

This Thanksgiving, turkey farmers are thankful for a better year than 2008. But the Northwest has far fewer turkey farmers than it used to.

In 2007, Oregon raised about half the turkeys it did just five years earlier. Oregon farmers and hobbyists raised just 3,000 birds in the whole state. In Idaho, the state had about 1,700 turkeys in 2002. In 2007, farmers there raised just 1,200. The census comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In 2002, Washington raised 23,000 turkeys. But at last count in 2007, that number got plucked to just 3,300 gobblers. Oregon and Idaho have reduced flocks too. Walla Walla area turkey farmer Clarice Swanson says with increased feed costs and the bum economy, raising any type of bird is hard. But pasture–raised turkeys are especially troublesome to tend. She's had to battle skunks, badgers, owls, hawks and mother nature. For example, she spent a late summer night rescuing 80 young turkeys from a violent storm. Otherwise they could have smothered each other to death.

Swanson: "I didn't want them to die. They were too young to die. They weren't anywhere near Thanksgiving yet and you have to take care of the animals all the way through and if that's when they are little and it's raining and the wind is blowing, you know you've got to take care of them. That's what farmers do with their animals."

But even industrial–scale operations have trouble turning a profit on turkeys. Keith Shoemaker is the CEO of Butterball based in North Carolina. His company raises about 38 million birds a year.

Shoemaker: "All the way from hatching it, or from the parent laying the egg to the fertilization of the egg. We know what our costs are in hundredths of a cent a pound. So that shows how small of a margin there is in the poultry industry."

Back in Walla Walla, Swanson is nearly sold out of turkeys this year, but her family is wondering whether they'll raise the birds again.

Anna King, Northwest News Network.

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