Turkey Day Is Almost Here. How Many Big Birds Will Be Eaten in US?

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving is here again. It's always between the 22nd and 28th of  November so this year it occurs at the latest possible date. About 46 million Turkeys will be consumed during Thanksgiving according to the National Turkey Federation.

Will you get your share?

The Turkey folks also report that about 96% of Americans eat turkey in some form during the Thanksgiving season. So that's a lot of dinner turkey, turkey sandwiches, turkey hash and my personal favorite--the Kentucky Turkey Hot Brown! That may be a blog for a later time.

 A small percentage are eaten on Thanksgiving

Of all the statistics from the Turkey Federation I was most impressed by the fact that the 46 million turkeys eaten at Thanksgiving only account for a measly %18 of all turkeys eaten in the US. We also manage to gobble down 22 million more birds on Christmas and 18 million on Easter.

At my house we shied away from eating turkey or even chicken on Easter since we were stuffing ourselves with Easter eggs. Somehow it didn't seem right to eat an animal before and after it's born

Where are all these turkeys raised?

You may find that most turkeys are raised in Minnesota, North Carolina and Arkansas but if you drive across Southern Indiana you'll find several big bird farms in Dubois County (Tip top Farms, WLP farms, Wening and Farbest) and several others in Indiana and Southern Illinois. About 15 million turkeys come from Indiana.