Top O' the Hill Farm is a small family farm dedicated to raising turkeys in a natural and healthy manner. Our Heritage Turkeys are free to roam and graze on grass, clover and insects. We supplement with a Certified Organic feed that is customized to their specific stage of development. They are not given hormones or antibiotics. We do not use pesticides or fertilizer.
Our birds are happy birds.
And we would be happy to share them with you.
Why Heritage Turkeys?
Heritage Turkeys are the ancestors of most of the turkeys you see at the supermarket. Some breeds of Heritage Turkeys were almost extinct until a movement began to bring them back. We hope to do our part to ensure that Heritage Turkeys make a comeback.
Our Heritage Turkeys seem to us to be the way turkeys should be. They can roam about, fly, mate, and do all the things that life has to offer a turkey. The typical supermarket turkey, the Broad Breasted White (BBW) cannot mate naturally. They must be artificially inseminated. They cannot fly and some can hardly walk because their breasts are so disproportionately large.
A BBW is engineered to grow fast and save the farmer money. They reach butchering weight in as few as 12-16 weeks. Heritage Turkeys take nearly twice as long to reach butcher weight. Ours will be 26-30 weeks old and all of them were hatched here on the farm!
Heritage Turkeys are much hardier than the BBW, which usually need to be fed a steady diet of antibiotics because they are prone to sickness. The confined quarters most of them are kept in does not help this situation. BBWs usually are beak-trimmed, detoed, or desnooded in order to prevent them from injuring/killing each other in their high-stress environment.
Our turkeys have been extremely healthy and we believe this is due to the type of bird, the amount of room they have, and the excellent feed they receive.
Click here to find out why Bon Appetit named Fresh Heritage Turkeys the Best Bird.
For more information about Heritage Turkeys, visit these sites:
www.heritageturkeyfoundation.org
The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy