Turkey may be the star dish of your Thanksgiving meal, but turkey production is important in Indiana year-round.
Kyle Becker of Becker Farms raises a flock of turkeys ahead of the holiday each year. He is celebrating a successful season.
"We had 600 out for delivery," he explains about this year's birds.
While turkeys can handle any weather (snow, rain, or sunshine), it may impact their size. The mainly dry weather in 2024 caused the birds to grow bigger.
Becker explained that most customers want birds weighing 14 to 18 pounds, but some people are okay with them weighing a bit more. There's just one problem.
"When they start getting 24 plus, they're kind of way too big to fit into a conventional oven," he laughed.
Becker has noticed the trend of consumers wanting to buy locally produced food.
"Business every year continues to grow," he said.
Despite some of the birds being a bit bigger this year, as of last check, he only has four birds left in his cooler available to sell.
He's proud of his farm and his flock. The business isn't easy, even though feed prices have dropped.
"Corn and soybean prices are actually down this year over last year some," he explained. "But then the turkey poults and the processing have both gone up."
While Becker's farm focuses just on raising the birds ahead of Thanksgiving, other farms raise and sell turkeys year-round.
"There are millions of turkeys raised in Indiana every year," he said. "Many of them would be for lunch meat and ground turkey, and then there's a lot of turkey that is exported."
Indiana ranks fourth in the nation for turkey production, according to the Indiana State Department of Agriculture.
You can learn more about Becker Farms here.
