By Lara Durben, MTGA Communications Director

Whew – what a whirlwind week!  Two of our turkeys made visits to first graders at Epiphany Catholic School in Coon Rapids and fourth and fifth graders at St. Paul City School, and we had a blast talking to the students and teaching them all about raising turkeys in Minnesota. You can tell the FFA students who are helping to raise the turkeys are doing an outstanding job because the turkeys were extremely calm and well-behaved. They didn’t seem to mind being carried in their crate between classes and mainly seemed curious about the students who were looking at them so closely.

Two of the FFA students – Brenna and Brianna – came along and talked to the students about their roles as caretakers of the turkeys and also explained a little more about what FFA (or Future Farmers of America) is. We also brought a turkey veterinarian from Willmar, MN – Dr. Ron Lippert – who answered a lot of questions from the students on what turkeys eat, how much water they drink, how big they grow and so on.

Did you know? Chicks dig the snood! All the classes wanted to know what that reddish-blue colored fleshy growth that hangs down from the turkey’s face is.  This is a “snood” and it’s main function in life is to attract the girl turkeys (or “hens”) to the boy turkeys (or “toms”).  All the kids thought that was pretty funny!

By the way, we tricked out the turkeys’ travel crate so it’s their own version of the White House!  Check it out – we think the turkeys look right at home!

You can view some of the photos from our school visits at the link below.

Next week … we’ll post more from our FFA students, plus we’ll be announcing our “Name the Thanksgiving Turkey Contest” on November 1 so watch for that!