Turkeys: They just keep getting bigger and bigger

11/25/21 7:00PM

To our American readers that are still digesting their Thanksgiving turkey — here's some data for you to bring up over today's leftovers: 60 years ago the average turkey weighed about 17 lbs, today it's almost double that (according to the latest data from the USDA).

‍Big bird

‍The tradition of eating Turkey for Thanksgiving goes back more than 150 years in the US, and farmers and producers have been honing their breeding techniques since pretty much day 1, in order to breed the biggest birds possible.

The techniques have gotten some help from scientific progress, but the strategy has remained surprisingly simple: breed the absolute largest males with as many hens as possible. Rinse and repeat every year and with a little help from artificial insemination — which helps spread the genetic material of the largest birds even further — the result is bigger and bigger turkeys. How long this trend can continue is unclear, but even in the last decade the average turkey has gained ~11% in weight, suggesting it is far from plateauing.

‍Peak turkey

‍Interestingly, although the turkeys have been getting bigger, American consumption of turkey has been coming down for quite some time. "Peak turkey" was actually back in 1996, as we wrote about last year.

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Turkeys: They just keep getting bigger and bigger

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