Turkey Day

Some interesting facts about the Star of Thanksgiving, the Turkey!!!

• The Guinness Book of Records states that the greatest dressed weight recorded for a turkey is 39.09 kg (86 lbs), at the annual "heaviest turkey" competition held in London, England on December 12, 1989.

• Fifty percent of Americans put the stuffing inside the Turkey.

• Fossil evidence shows that turkeys roamed the Americas 10 million years ago.

• 91% of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

• Turkeys have heart attacks. When the Air Force was conducting test runs and breaking the sound barrier, fields of turkeys would drop dead.

• Turkey is the traditional dish for the Thanksgiving feast. In the US, about 280 million turkeys are sold for the Thanksgiving celebrations. There is no official reason or declaration for the use of turkey. They just happened to be the most plentiful meat available at the time of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, starting the tradition.

• The preliminary estimate of the number of turkeys raised in the United States in 2005 is 256 million. That’s down 3 percent from 2004. The turkeys produced in 2004 weighed 7.3 billion pounds altogether and were valued at $3.1 billion.

• Turkeys were one of the first animals in the Americas to be domesticated.

• 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.