Chapter 22 twenty turkeys

animals for special occasions ★Origin Wild turkeys are birds that are only found in North and Central America. There are actually two types: one is the common turkey, which is distributed in most parts of the United States, from Canada in the north and Mexico in the south; Extends from southern Mexico to Guatemala and Belize in Central America.It is generally believed that the former common turkey is the ancestor of our domestic turkey. We are almost certain that humans were raising turkeys by the time the Spaniards arrived in the New World.The first European to describe turkeys described them as white laying hens, which shows that turkeys were already real domestic animals at that time, not to mention that both wild turkeys are not white.Whatever traits the first turkey breeders wanted to select for, they eventually bred for the secondary trait of whiteness.Perhaps it was an accident, but since whiteness is such a likable trait, it has been preserved.

In the relationship between turkeys and humans, there is also a spiritual component.The Mayans believed that the wild turkey symbolized the south and was the best sacrifice to the great god of the south, Nohol.Until now, the descendants of the Mayans still predict the weather by observing the behavior of turkeys; they believe that when turkeys take a sand bath, it means that it will rain soon. I have been to a small Mayan colony in the territory of Centanaro in the eastern Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, surrounded by artifacts, where people lived among unexplored pyramids and temple ruins, and domestic turkeys and chickens These toppled ornate buildings are pecking around.These pigs and chickens were introduced to the Mayans by European invaders, but turkeys are one of the few domestic animals that are entirely indigenous to the New World.

It used to be believed that turkeys were first introduced to Europe around 1524 AD; by the 1570s they had multiplied into large populations, many of them in Germany.In the 1580s, people first used turkey as part of the Christmas meal, so people discovered its most appropriate function.A large but not too large turkey can provide ten times as much meat as a medium-sized chicken, so the two birds have since taken on different roles: chicken is an everyday dish, turkey Chickens have become birds that belong to special festivals.In the United States, turkey is an extremely popular winter festive food, and it is a traditional dish for Thanksgiving and Christmas; just like chicken has played a role in history, turkey is a festive food.

There are no jungle chickens or pheasants in the New World (ring-necked pheasants were introduced from Asia to North America at the beginning of this century), so turkeys are one of the few quail chickens (fowl︱like) that are easy to obtain, and it is known that It is the largest of them all.Turkeys have another advantage: They are ubiquitous.Unlike other large birds such as cranes or geese, turkeys do not migrate.Quail and grouse also served as domestic animals, but the Indians seem to have favored the larger and more reliable turkey.Like many quail species, turkeys are precocious and very productive.

Although the Native Americans of North America have no record of any other animals for comparison (except dogs), keeping turkeys was an easy job for them.Wild turkeys are very poor at flying (domestic turkeys can't fly at all, but ironically they were bred to have extremely developed breasts because the muscles they use to fly, or the breast meat, are the tastiest part), so It is very easy to drive them away, and therefore easy to catch and raise them, and to select from the flocks of turkeys which ones are used for food and which ones are used for breeding.Naturally, turkeys became human domestic animals.

There are currently seven species of domestic turkeys in the United States: Bronze Turkey, Narraganser Bay Turkey, Dutch White Turkey, Black Turkey, Slate Green Turkey, Bourbon Red Turkey, and Bertsville Small White Turkey Chicken, of which at least six species are native to the United States, and the white Dutch species may have come from Europe.The bronze-colored turkey is the largest, and the male bronze-colored turkey can weigh about thirty-six pounds (about 16.3 kilograms). There is another inevitable irony in the story about the turkey.Even though turkeys are our animal of choice for some important holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas), we raise them in the same harsh conditions as chicken farms, and, moreover, they suffer the same fate as chickens because We don't seem to think of them as living animals at all.

★Other quail and chicken Any species of birds in the Galliformes may become human livestock, especially the grouse family (grouse and prairie grouse), pheasant family (such as pheasant, quail and jungle fowl), guinea fowl family (such as guinea hen), There are also Tushou chicken family (such as turkey) and so on.It is astonishing that, with so many birds in the galliformes, so few species became modern domestic animals, and that, with the exception of chickens and turkeys, other species can only be regarded as minor achievements .Exactly how much effort humans have gone to to breed different species, and why they have given up without success, is obviously not known today.

The peacock (peafowl, male peacock called peacock) is a wild bird that occurs in the Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.Male peacocks have magnificent tail feathers, so peacocks have been domesticated to some degree by humans as early as, or even before, recorded human history.Anyone who sees a peacock is moved by its tail feathers, so they have long been a valuable trade commodity.In fact, peacock tail feathers, like ivory, were once a form of currency.To someone who has never seen a peacock, the tail feathers of a male peacock must seem to possess mystical powers. The Romans not only ate peacock meat (what rare, ostentatious, and expensive food they didn't eat?), but also kept them in gardens as decorative birds.Now, hobbyists all over the world are breeding albino or other exotic types of peacocks, purely for the pleasure of viewing.However, because the peacock's call is neither pleasant nor indistinct, it is a bit like the angry call of a Siamese cat weighing fifty-five pounds (about 25 kilograms) on a short branch outside the window before dusk, Therefore greatly reduced the viewing pleasure of peacock.

Peacocks are very tame, so there is no need to keep them in pens.They are not too expensive to buy, whether as adults, eggs, or chicks.They can of course be found in the wild, but only peacocks in captivity are considered domestic animals.Exactly when and where the Moguls of India, or their noble ancestors, began to adorn their homes and gardens with penned peacocks is unknown, but since then the company of peacocks has become extremely important. Ordinary and common. Guinea hen is a very common bird in many parts of Africa. When I stayed in the local bush area, I used to see them running in a hurry every day, sometimes a large group of galloping past.Before 500 BC, the Greeks and Romans, and of course the Egyptians, kept and ate guinea fowl, a practice that has continued into modern times.In many parts of India, guinea hens are kept in a semi-wild state.This guinea fowl dish can also be seen on the menu of hotels serving tourists in East Africa, and even some Africans have the habit of eating guinea fowl.They are raised on private land in Europe and the United States, but they are not usually considered a food source; they are not as tender and tasty as chicken, after all.As for livestock, humans have bred them for thousands of years, but probably only a handful of them have ever been purposefully bred.There are three types of guinea fowl that are really common in the United States: the guinea fowl, the white guinea fowl, and the purple guinea fowl.Perhaps this serves as evidence that the rearing process of guinea hens is still ongoing.

There are about one hundred and eighty-five species in the pheasant family, including the red jungle fowl, the ancestor of the domestic chicken; in addition, the quail, grouse, and especially the pheasant are regarded as important highland game birds, and they are regarded as Feed them in pens, breed them, migrate them, free them, and finally shoot them.One example is the ring-necked pheasant, which originated in Asia and is now the native chicken of North America, Hawaii, and New Zealand. Indeed, most Americans have no idea that the pheasant they are familiar with is not a native species.In the wild, pheasants live in flocks, but whether pheasants introduced and bred for hunting should be considered domesticated by humans is an open question.Perhaps, the answer is no, because pheasants did not change much during the period of captivity before humans released them as targets.

The same is true of many quails and pheasants.Humans have hunted, raised and eaten quail since the heyday of Egypt.The Greeks and Romans do not seem to have known quail as food until later, around or before the Middle Ages, when they began to consider quail as a delicacy.Now, the only difference between quail and pheasant is that in the United States, Europe and Japan, quail is more commonly sold as farm-raised poultry in comparison.Still, they are not considered a significant food industry.Quails, especially quail, are still considered wild birds in North America, Southern Europe, and Western Asia, perhaps in a transitional phase between being actively exploited by humans or becoming domesticated poultry.There doesn't seem to be much difference yet between wild quail and farm-raised quail.North American quail (also known as bobwhite) and Japanese quail produce eggs weighing one-third of an ounce each, and these eggs are considered a delicacy. It is surprising why the peoples of the New World, having succeeded in raising turkeys, did not do the same with quail.The Mayans called the quail cranes bech, and they are not an important role in Mayan legends, but there are still quail cranes and a god named Halack︱Uinic in the legend. Interactive stories.The quail in the story is an ambitious bird who once got himself into trouble for lying, and as a result, was condemned and forced to nest on the ground, leaving him vulnerable.According to the story, quail originally nested in trees before falling out of favor with Halak︱Unik.Therefore, the Mayans knew that there was a quail, so they naturally hunted it to obtain delicious quail. The Maya and the quail had an interactive relationship with each other, but they did not step into the process of breeding.