The turkeys at Troll Bridge Farm are pasture-raised, and Lisa Skillman, who runs the farm with her husband and four of their six children, said she works hard to keep the birds as natural as possible. Their beaks aren’t cut and their toes aren’t clipped, practices often used on farms owned by large corporations.
Ms. Skillman was raised on a dairy farm that was on the land where Troll Bridge now sits. When her parents sold the business more than 25 years ago, they kept the land. Ms. Skillman decided to begin farming again in 2007, starting with raising goats. She added turkeys, chickens and pigs in 2018.
“It’s just what I wanted to do,” she said, adding that she loved working with animals and being outdoors. “It’s just in my blood.”
Ms. Skillman said her original plan had been to raise animals for her family to eat, and that she struggled to even find customers to buy the poultry and pork.
That changed in 2020, when many people had trouble finding the meat they were used to in grocery stores during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, demand for pasture-raised animals has soared.
This year, Ms. Skillman’s farm sold out of its turkeys — 41 in all — earlier than ever, on Nov. 3. She said the majority of the farms in her area have more customers than they can handle, and some farmers have even asked her if she has extra turkeys to sell.
“The popularity of a farm-fresh turkey has definitely grown a lot in the last four years,” she said. Most of her customers live locally, in the suburbs of East Buffalo or the Rochester area, and they pick up the birds in person.
“What I hear from people is they don’t trust their grocery stores, they don’t trust the large farms, they don’t trust the large corporations that run them,” she said.
Turkeys that are humanely raised are often more expensive because of the quality of their food, the space they require and the extra time farmers spend raising them.
It takes anywhere from 12 to 20 weeks to raise a turkey, said Robert Yaman, the founder and chief executive of Innovate Animal Ag, a nonprofit focused on technology that improves animal welfare.
“Consumers more and more are looking to understand the practices on farms and are starting to care a lot more about the way the animals are raised,” he said. “We see this in willingness to pay for higher welfare.”
Commercial turkeys that weigh 16 to 20 pounds and are sold in places like Stop & Shop or Walmart typically cost between $20 and $50.
Nearly all commercial turkeys are raised in “filthy, cramped conditions,” said Andrew deCoriolis, the executive director of Farm Forward, an animal advocacy group.
He said most labels on animal products, including ones like “antibiotic-free,” don’t have regulatory definitions, and are instead largely defined by the companies themselves.
But third-party certifications, he said, are more meaningful, such as the “Animal Welfare Approved” certification bestowed by A Greener World.
Those animals tend to be raised primarily on pasture and with healthier genetics. Toe-clipping and beak-cutting, which are often used so the animals don’t cannibalize and kill one another out of stress, are forbidden.
Once people taste the difference between store-bought and farm-raised turkey, Ms. Skillman said, they often refuse to go back.
“What I hear time and time again is the quality of the meat in the stores has gone down and the price has gone up,” she said, adding that many customers have decided that if they are going to pay a high price, they’d rather just go straight to the farmer.
Though Ms. Skillman loves her job, she said raising turkeys and other animals is strenuous.
“There’s a lot of work involved,” she said. “I’m not getting paid $15, $20 an hour to do this. That cost per bird — it doesn’t pay me minimum wage.”
On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the turkeys were packed into a livestock trailer to be taken to the processor, where they were slaughtered. The trailer was bought used, two years ago, for $5,000.
The farmers drive to the slaughterhouse once to drop the turkeys off and then again to pick them up, traveling about 35 miles round trip each time. They spend about $30 on gas, much more than in 2019.
“It’s even difficult for me sometimes to send them off to the butcher,” Ms. Skillman said. “But I know that I’m providing a good product for people and a healthier meat option.”
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