2018 Home for the Holidays

Page 8 2018 Home for the Holidays LINCOLN DAILY NEWS November 21, 2018 they get excited, their heads get engorged with blood, almost concealing the eyes and bill. The juvenile males are known as Jakes and have a very short beard and his tail fan has longer feathers in the middle. Tom turkeys are much bigger than the females that are called hens. The hens have duller feathers, in shades of brown and gray but the primary wing feathers have white bars. Turkeys have 5,000 to 6,000 feathers! When smoked in a smoke house or baked in the oven, the turkey can turn out tender and juicy and be the perfect centerpiece on the Thanksgiving table. Of course turkeys have come a long way since being hunted in the 1600’s. Now there are tom turkey farms that have a range of small, medium, or large domesticated birds to choose from. The adult male (or tom) normally weighs from 11 to 24 pounds and measures 39 to 49 inches in length. The adult female is typically much smaller at 5.5 to 11.9 pounds and is 30 to 37 inches long. It is unusual to get a 39 pound bird. Anytime you go to the store you can buy fresh or a frozen turkey. Enclosed is the recipe to cook it to its delicious perfection! Where do turkeys dwell? According to Wikipedia, the habitat of the wild turkey has a preference to hardwood and mixed conifer-hardwood forests with scattered openings such as pastures, fields, orchards and seasonal marshes. They can adapt to virtually any plant community as long as coverage and openings are available. In the Northeast of North America, turkeys are most profuse in hardwood timber of oak- hickory and forests of red oak, beech, cherry, and white ash. Plain and Piedmont sections have an interspersion of clearings, farms, and plantations with preferred habitat along principal rivers and in cypress and tupelo swamps. In Appalachian and Cumberland plateaus, birds occupy mixed forests of oaks and pines on southern and western slopes. They can Continued u