Though turkeys and chickens are flock animals, few domesticated birds even meet their families, let alone their mothers. Each year, untold millions of turkeys hatch in industrial incubators and are prepared, at mere hours old, for food production. Two hundred forty-five million will live long enough to die at slaughter.
These fragile, frightened beings simply need a loving touch; instead, they’re crushed against the bodies of other panicked babies and handled roughly by harried workers racing against their production clocks.
Compared to their wild relatives, domesticated turkeys are bred to grow as large as possible—and as fast as possible. Typically, they’re slaughtered for food at four to five months of age. They don’t reach sexual maturity until a little later, though; by that time, those used for this purpose are already too large to reproduce naturally.
So, all reproduction on mass turkey farms happens through artificial insemination: semen is forcibly “milked” from the males and then thrust into females to fertilize their eggs. And in the end, these exploited parents never get to raise a baby.
Alas, Henrietta never met her mother. The young turkey didn’t have much time left, herself. But then, someone helped her escape.