Turkeys Gobble Up More Cash This Year

When Americans sit down to devour the 46 million turkeys that will be eaten on Thanksgiving Day, their waistlines may grow larger but their wallets will have shrunk, government figures show.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that retail prices of turkey are on the rise, according to Sherrie Rosenblatt of the National Turkey Federation.

“One of the main reasons that turkey prices are higher is that the cost of producing turkeys has gone up exponentially,” Rosenblatt said. “Feed, which is 70 percent of the cost of producing turkey, has required turkey producers and processors to think about how much they can produce.”

Tom Reynolds of  in Reisterstown said he is feeling the effects firsthand but people are willing to pay more for a home-grown bird.

Reynolds says that the cost of the corn and soybean mixture he uses to feed his turkeys increased 30 percent in the last year alone. He estimates that it’s going to cost him more than an additional $5,000 to feed his flock this year.

That is combined with the steadily increasing operational costs required to efficiently maintain a farm. As a result, some commercial producers are opting to substitute traditional mixtures for questionable substitutes like wheat middlings and brewer’s grain, Reynolds said.

“Our product is a little different than the commercial bird,” he said. “A commercial guy can’t make his turkey as good as I can because he can’t afford to feed the feed that I feed.”

Shane Hughes, who owns Liberty Delight Farms, has been going to Farmer Tom’s for his gobblers for the past three years.

“It’s a local bird, it’s a local product—grown local, raised right," Hughes said. "[There are] no hormones or chemicals or injected growth stimulants. They [are] free range....The bird has a decent quality of life.”

Hughes has witnessed the prices for all meats—including the beef, pork and poultry that he sells—climb in recent years.

"What the farmer puts into the animal, the time, the effort, the infrastructure it takes to raise any animal—you have to take a look that,” he said.

Rosenblatt speculated on why people may not mind handing over a little extra dough for the delicious bird.

She said: “They don’t call it Turkey Day for nothing."