Heritage turkeys

[longranger]

At what age do heritage breed turkeys and wild turkeys get too tough or gamey for a holiday dinner?

 

[sandspoultry]

It depends on how you cook and prepare the turkey.
Sharon

 

[longranger]

I want to know if a 2 or 3 year old hen or tom can still be excellent roasted or smoked. No doubt they would make many excellent servings of dumplings, pot pies, soup etc..

 

[pdpatch]

Wild turkeys tend to move around a lot, they are also physically leaner , and fly more then what is called a heritage turkey, so generally they are considered tougher from the start.

As far as a 1 year old turkey, it should be if you rest the meat after the butcher, and brine it. But the best results for heritage turkeys is about 30 weeks old or about 9 months.

We recently butchered a one year old red bourbon, since out of a possible 20 plus eggs none were fertail. We smoked the meat and he seemed tender.

Tom