It’s a great time of year to welcome our latest member, Tim Way Turkeys from Winchester.
From his family farm at Wonston, Tim produces high welfare bronze and white turkeys with the very best quality of life, full traceability and exceptional flavour for your Christmas day!
His turkeys are hand-reared for 24 weeks and fed on locally produced oats, wheat and barley.
They’re not only reared on the farm, but processed and plucked there too. That means there’s no travelling, and it’s believed that traditional hand plucking methods enhance food hygiene, reduces stress for the bird, increases shelf life and allows them to ‘game hang’ the meat.
This ensures the most succulent, flavoursome and tender turkey.
Tim’s turkeys are raised to the highest welfare standards. They’re stocked well below ‘free range’ regulations, with 255 birds per acre in comparison to intensively reared supermarket turkeys housed at 16,000 birds per acre in barns!
Unlike supermarket turkeys, they’re not fed on fattening diets designed for maximum weight gain in the shortest time. They just have more feed and a wide variety of nutritious food.
They’ll often be found eating wheat, barley, oats, courgettes, turnips and plenty of grass, all of which is produced on the doorstep and in their garden!
Intensively reared supermarket turkeys have an average age of just nine weeks, while Tim’s are at least 23 weeks old. Maturity improves flavour, and enables different fat layers to be laid down (so you’ll have no dry turkey this year!)
Their turkeys are hung and dry-aged for two weeks, unlike intensively reared supermarket turkeys that can be killed up to a month before Christmas and stored in carbon dioxide filled bags to keep them ‘fresh’. Traditionally game hanging turkeys produces enzymes which break down connective tissues, resulting in the very best flavour and texture.
