Talking turkey with free-range farmer

YOU may like ‘em white, but more and more people are opting for a bronze turkey for Christmas — the bird hunted by the Pilgrims in America for their first Thanksgiving dinner and the ancestor of our modern turkey.

About 200 free-range bronze turkeys are being prepared for the Christmas market on the 100-year-old family farm of Brian O’Regan in Kinsale, Co Cork.

It’s still a relatively small market — he’s rearing 1,800 of the traditional white free-range turkeys on the family farm at the same time.

However, he says, consumer interest in the bronze turkey is steadily increasing.

“We’re expanding the number of bronze turkeys. We had 50 bronze turkeys last year and we were sold out. People kept looking for the bronze turkey right up to Christmas Eve.”

The difference?

“Your ordinary turkey has less than 1% fat, whereas the bronze has slightly more fat. The flavour of the meat is better and the meat is more moist after cooking. They are becoming increasingly popular.”

“This is the original turkey hunted by the first settlers in America and was the original Thanksgiving dinner turkey. The modern bronze turkey is bigger than their ancestors thanks to breeding. It would be similar in size to the white turkey,” says Brian.

Christmas starts in July for the O’Regans, who buy their turkeys from Essex, England, on July 21 when they’re only one day old.

The birds — which are classed as Department of Agriculture-approved free-range birds — are fed a special diet of oats, wheat and soya bean. There are no hormones or antibiotics in their feed, says Brian.

For the first three weeks of life the baby birds are kept under heat lamps. After that they have the run of a large paddock and some big barns.

“We start slaughtering on December 9. They’re hung for about 10 days in a specially designed cold room on the farm. We also kill turkeys for the Thanksgiving market, which is growing.

“They usually live to about 150 days, minimum, whereas the commercial turkey might only live to about 90 — that is where you get the difference in flavour as well.”

The 33-year-old went into the free-range turkey business in 2002. His wife Siobhán is a chef and has, he says, very strong policies on the flavour and origins of food, something which, he admits, was “a factor in our decision to rear free-range turkeys and to experiment with the bronze turkey”.

Siobhán offers Christmas recipes and cooking advice on the farm’s website www.beechwoodfarm.com The couple, who sell their produce through farmers’ markets, their own farm and selected butcher shops in west Cork as well as to customers in Waterford and Tipperary, are in the process of converting to organic production, which he estimates will take two years.