Local Color

To some folks, the coming of winter is marked by the first snowfall, or the last of the leaves dropping from the deciduous trees. Where I come from, there’s a different mark of the season:

That’s right, Gozzi’s colored turkeys!  Gozzi's Turkey Farm has been doing this for at least thirty years; it's a marketing tool to bring in orders for Thanksgiving and Christmas birds.  These few get a break of at least a few weeks!

Disclaimers: These photos are unedited aside from sizing; the birds really are this bright. The dye is nontoxic and doesn’t harm the birds in any way. They get a quick dip and they’re done. By Christmas, these birds will have lost most of their colored feathers and plain-old white ones will have replaced them. The kids love trying to get a colored feather from the pen!  Invariably a few kids stick their fingers in and get nipped; it's startling but doesn't really hurt.

It was really crowded when we went yesterday ... by colored-turkey-pen standards anyhow. 

The wallflower of the group really stands out in this setting!

If you’re ever driving down the I-95 corridor in Connecticut during November or December, give me a shout; it’s a quick stop worthy of roadsideamerica.  Happy belated Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends; happy upcoming Thanksgiving to my friends in the U.S.!