As industrial meat production began focusing on only a handful of livestock and poultry breeds in the mid-1900s, our more traditional livestock and poultry breeds became rare and, in some cases, nearly extinct. In 1997, The Livestock Conservancy conducted a census of heritage turkeys and found only 1,335 breeding birds in the whole US. Thanks to The Livestock Conservancy’s and Slow Food’s campaigns and the work of small-scale farms like Elmwood Stock Farm, by 2003, the breeding population had more than doubled, numbering 4,275. As of 2007, there were more than 10,000 breeding heritage turkeys—a tremendous turnaround in population and a narrow miss in losing important genetic diversity.
Elmwood Stock Farm has been breeding heritage turkeys for more than 10 years, and we have seen increasing interest in the work we are doing with these rare animals as awareness nationwide improves and we educate our customers here at home. We appreciate each customer who has purchased a heritage turkey from us and therefore helped us to increase our breeding flock and efforts to maintain this national treasure.