I love Thanksgiving, in part because I am an avian vet and this is a bird holiday involving a very special bird — the wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Wild turkeys are the heaviest of the poultry species, or galliformes. The domestic turkey that we cook for our tables on Thanksgiving was bred from a subspecies of the wild turkeys from southern Mexico. While the wild turkey is a darkly colored brilliant bird, the domestic turkey is bred to grow rapidly and have white feathers — all for an important meal on the third Thursday of November!
