Hatching ideas for turkey

Philip Crozier raises free-range and incredibly stupid turkeys on his farm near Ashburton. Picture / Simon Baker

New Zealand is a nation of chicken lovers. We eat more than 87 million each year. But for one day only, turkey gives chicken the bird.

Demand for the traditional Christmas table fowl grows about 23 per cent in the run-up to the big day, yet annual demand for turkey remains stubbornly consistent at about 385,000 birds.

Demand for chicken has been growing on average 6 per cent a year. New Zealanders consume the equivalent of 38.9kg of chicken each a year, compared to 0.34kg of turkey.

Poultry Industry Association executive director Michael Brooks says the challenge for the industry is to break out of the pattern of seasonal demand. Developing more processed food choices would make the bird a less daunting option for the oven and could be the answer to more gobbling.

"It's a time-frame issue for people," he says. "As we know people are busy, and that's where chicken has made that quantum leap on the other protein meats.

"It's that ease of use, that availability, that convenience factor."

There are just three turkey producers, all of whom are based in the South Island: Tegel, Crozier's and Canter Valley.

Philip "The Turkey Man" Crozier started farming turkeys at the age of 12 on his father's sheep farm.

"I got seven hens and a gobbler and ended up with over 105 turkeys the first year and never looked back."

Crozier says the excitment of turkey farming has kept him at it for more than 45 years.

"For years there was always something going wrong. We never had enough turkey to supply the market," he says. "Now it's the marketing that's the hardest part."

The learning curve included working with a bird that has the personality of a lemming.

Crozier says if the power failed for half an hour all the turkeys would perish.

Chickens caught in a power cut would sit down and wait. Turkeys would all run squawking to the centre of the room and attack each other.

"And the only one left alive is the one standing on top," Crozier says.

His 80-acre turkey farm at Dromore, near Ashburton, raises about 20,000 birds a year.

With next year's birds already scratching about the free-range farm, planning for the Christmas rush can be tricky.

A slow start this year left Crozier thinking he would have stock left over, but a week ago sales took off and he has now run out of most bird sizes.

"We take a big gamble on boning a whole lot [of turkey] earlier in the season, packing it all up and moving it out at Christmas time," he says.

Birds are hatched every two weeks from the start of November through to February. At the age of 5 1/2 weeks they move into a paddock, and at 14 weeks they are ready for processing and freezing.

Turkey meat is in fact cheaper to grow than chicken but only if the demand is high enough for producers to take advantage of economies of scale, Crozier says.

However, previous industry marketing campaigns aimed at broadening the demand for turkey outside of Christmas have failed, he adds.

"We are really only supplying turkey at Christmas time, and that's why the cost is a little high."

The birds themselves appear to have no idea that their time is nearly up.

"They say turkeys have got a big body with a little head," Crozier says.

'They will stand behind the shed when it's raining ... and if they stood back they wouldn't be half as wet but they'll drown before they'd move."