How to Wash a Turkey Or NOT!

1) Grab turkey in bear hug and waddle over to make-shift wash tub

2) Dodge frantically flapping wings and flailing legs.

3) Carefully lower the freaked out turkey into a nicely prepared bubble bath.

4) Reassure the confused bird with positive sayings like, "It's okay, buddy, it will be over soon." Be sure to use your best turkey voice.

5) Wrap your hand in your toddlers worn out leggings and gently wipe away the grime that has built up over the past 4 months.

6) Once again grasp turkey in your arms and place him in the next wash tub for a gentle rinse cycle.

7) Towel dry sopping wet turkey.

8) Blow dry turkey till nicely fluffed.

OR NOT!

Two days before we had to enter our turkeys we were told by more experienced 4-Her's to try to get the weights of our pairs of turkeys as close together as possible and have uniform meat on the breasts. Plus, just to make life more comical, we needed to give our turkeys a bath, blow dry them and then somehow keep them clean until the show on Saturday.

Well, let me just tell you, we should have had a video camera.

Joel went in the pen and wrangled himself a big ole tom. I yanked the gate open and he struggled out with a squirming, kicking bird. He placed it on the scale only to have it freak out and start beating its wings at a furious pace. I thought for sure it would either break its wings or Joel's nose. I wisely curled up into a ball and stuck my nose to the ground! Joel was on his own! There was no way I was going to get bashed in the face by a flailing turkey!

After much flapping and minor loss of feathers, we finally got the turkey settled down and found that it topped out our baby scales (scales we use to weigh our rabbits). We then knew we had some pretty big birds (37.5 lbs., as we soon came to find out). Joel wisely decided he had had enough of weighing birds and just picked out the biggest four.

We held a mini conference right there in the yard and soon came to a unanimous decision that there would be no turkey bathing in our future. We couldn't even get the crazy things weighed. How were we going to get them in the tubs of bath water that we had so lovingly prepared? Who ever heard of washing a turkey anyhow. The very idea is absurd! However, we stilled opted for a foot washing.

I'm not sure how anyone ever bathed a turkey, because even our foot washing was a struggle. However, after the initial struggles we endured with the weighing, Joel decided an old T-shirt placed on their heads to cover their eyes might calm them a bit. The first turkey behaved beautifully. I quickly washed his poopy feet (a job I didn't cherish). And then Joel carted him off to my potting shed.

We repeated this foot washing ceremony three more times. With much grunting, flapping, splashing, flailing, dodging and scrambling. And come to find out the next day nobody else washed their turkeys either. The whole turkey washing concept~ I'm pretty sure its an initiation ceremony for naive 4-Her's!

After an afternoon spent turkey wrangling we all just wanted to do this...