Pecking order

Apart from price, what's the difference between a free-range, organic and battery-raised turkey? Breda Heffernan goes down on the farm to find out.

The bird on the festively decorated dining table is the crowning glory of Christmas Day indulgence - a succulent pleasure that excuses the presence of a steaming pile of Brussels sprouts and the hours spent basting. But as you raise the carving knife, spare a thought for how the bird got there.

More likely than not, it will be the product of a battery farm. Cut down in its prime, getting its first and last glimpse of the outside world on the journey to the abattoir, it will know only a life spent crowded into a dimly-lit shed with thousands of others. It may not taste quite as mouthwatering as its organic or free-range compatriots but, coming in at a fraction of the cost, does it matter how it was raised?

With organic turkeys accounting for less than 1 per cent of the nearly four million turkeys produced here each year and free-range little more, are battery turkeys an inescapable fact of life? Can our consciences be pricked and our wallets emptied by the lifestyle of a turkey? Especially when, depending on the number of mouths to feed, it will represent no more than two Christmas dinners, a mountain of sandwiches and - at a stretch - a curry and a pasta bake?

When free-range isn't as "free" as you may have believed - some birds may roam outdoors for only four hours a day - and organic turkeys can be given antibiotics, albeit with strict regulations, are these birds worth the extra expense?

Free-range turkey producer Orla Salley wants to get back to the way her grandmother reared turkeys for Christmas. But despite the location of Salley's farm, Snugboro, nestling amid rolling hills and shimmering lakes high above the village of Roundwood, Co Wicklow, the long hand of the EU Agriculture Ministry is making its presence felt.

When Salley started out seven years ago, the turkeys were killed, plucked and left to hang for up to five days in a barn to allow the flavour to mature. The birds were then brought from the farm to market in Ashbourne, Co Meath, where butchers would bid for the finished produce. However, strict new EU regulations mean that turkeys must now be slaughtered in a registered abattoir and, unless farmers have the financial resources to build their own facility, this has effectively put an end to the age-old practice of turkeys being killed on the farm and left to hang.

"Now they leave the farm alive and the processor kills, plucks, cleans, weighs and bags them," laments Salley as she picks her way through gangs of idling Bronze turkeys. "It's rules like that that are taking all the good out of it. We'd like to be able to do it the old-fashioned way because if this sort of thing continues, we'll all end up eating cardboard."

Building her own processing unit is out of the question financially and out of character with Snugboro. "Ours isn't an automated, high-tech farm, we just leave the barn door open for [the turkeys\] to roam in and out," she adds.

Raising 250 turkeys is a Christmas sideline for Salley, the chance to make a few extra euro when farm prices are low. But preparations for Christmas dinner start early.

The chicks arrived in early June when they were just three weeks old and no bigger than a blackbird. On a diet of barley, wheat and soybean, supplemented with foraged grass, clover and hedge leaves, the turkeys soon grow. In late November they are already an intimidating nine or 10 lbs. In their last few weeks they will put on most of their weight and when "dispatched" will weigh anything from 12 to 18lbs. Six months may not sound like much of a lifetime, but this can be double that of intensively reared turkeys, some of which are slaughtered as young as 12 weeks.

Battery turkeys are often kept in large, windowless, artificially ventilated broiler sheds, some of which can accommodate flocks of up to 10,000 birds. As the birds grow in size they become increasingly tightly packed and while lighting intensity is kept low so as to minimise fighting among the birds, cases of cannibalism do occur. Some birds are selectively bred for rapid weight gain and, through the use of high-nutrient feed, bulk up so quickly that they are unable to support their own weight.

Access to fresh air and more space means that free-range turkeys do not face many of these problems. But, although they can feed at their own pace, they can still be brutish with each other.

Looking more like vultures than any farmyard bird should, it's easy to see why the Bronze variety has a reputation for being aggressive. Surveying the gobbling, heaving mass of bodies that have transformed his once tranquil yard into a quagmire of oozing mud, Orla's husband Eamon explains that with Bronzes it's all about survival of the fittest. "If a lad gets sick they'll peck him to death. If one looks off colour, he'll be dead by the evening," he says with a knowing look. Orla later relates how one of her three young sons has a phobia of birds - it comes as no surprise.

Snugboro turkeys have free run in 17 acres of grazing pasture. Orla believes her turkeys are as free range as they come and are organic in all but name. She frowns upon antibiotics, using them neither on her kids nor on her turkeys, and gives the birds only a wormer and a vitamin supplement when very young. She hasn't sought organic status because then the whole farm would have to be classified as organic and, as turkeys are just a Christmas sideline on the cattle farm, it wouldn't make economic sense.

"I think it's all about perception," she explains. "If they're free range and get good feed and are given no chemicals or antibiotics, then that's as organic as I want it. To go down the other route would be very costly."

Snugboro Bronze free-range turkeys are sold at a number of outlets including Sawyers, Chatham Street, Donnybrook Fare, and at SuperValu, Deansgrange, all in Dublin. It also sells directly to customers at €3.50-€4 per lb. Tel: 01 -2818178.