Meleagris gallopavo–domesticated turkey.
No, it’s not exactly a bird sanctuary; it’s an egg farm in Brittany, where they don’t actually know from Thanksgiving. The turkey is about to be inseminated (artificially, that is) by the male Homo sapiens.
Meleagris gallopavo
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This page contains a single entry by Matt Young published on November 26, 2009 8:00 AM.
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Did the photographer get free samples?
In Spanish (as I know it) a wild turkey is a guajalote, while a tame turkey is a pavo.
Considering the proximate event is a turkey insemination, did he really want free samples?
The turkeys in the picture are tom turkeys. They must be collecting semen for artificial insemination.
IANAB, though I confess to some passing knowledge of where babies come from, and I saw a hell of a lot of eggs. The turkeys in this picture have red wattles, so I gather they are males. Now that I look more closely, I see that the turkey that was being inseminated (in another picture, which I will spare you) has no wattles and is presumably female. As I understood it, the function of the farm was to provide fertilized eggs for turkey farms.
Whew. For a minute there I was having flashbacks to the infamous Sarah turkey video.
Enjoy.
This comment has been moved to The Bathroom Wall.
Just like that? Not even dinner and a movie beforehand?
Considering how easy it is to get parthenogenically derived eggs from domestic turkeys I wonder “Why bother?”
I can’t put into words how grateful I am for the clarification.
The broad-breasted white (BBW) (those shown) and the broad-breasted bronze (BBB) breeds of turkeys grow so quickly that they rapidly outgrow their ability to procreate naturally.
I butchered several six-month old BBW toms last weekend that topped 40 lbs.
I doubt that “parthenogenetically derived eggs” would be able to meet the demands of a commercial production operation. Turkeys also have that ability to store sperm for 4-6 weeks to fertilize the eggs they produce.
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