STREAMLINE TURKEYS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 36, 12 February 1936, Page 4

STREAMLINE TURKEYS

TO FIT MODERN SMALL OVENS

SYDNEY BREEDERS' EXPERIMENTS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, February 5. Streamlining turkeys to produce a bird that will fit more easily into modern ovens is the uncommon experiment to be commenced in Sydney within a few weeks. The type sought is to be shorter in the leg, deeper in ,the chest, and broader in the back. They will be compact birds with more meat on the breast and will weigh from 131b to 151b instead of the 251b, which some of the present-day turkeys reach.

In fact, the remodelled turkey will look something like a duck. It will mean the passing of an old friend, the bronze wing, that has borne the heat and burden of Christmas banquets for many years, but this sad step must be taken if the turkey trade is to meet'the inexorabzle law of supply and demand.

With the growth of flats, the spacious ovens of the nineteenth century have gone, and no longer is it possible for many housewives to roast a 25-pounder as their mothers did. Besides, families are now more widely-dispersed at Christmas than they, used to be; families are also smaller. . So smaller turkeys are to be the vogue.

Some breeders have already experimented with new breeds, and the results have been satisfactory. The meeting of the Turkey Breeders' Association in a few weeks

will decide which of these varieties is to be selected as the 1936 model. The bronze wing will not vanish altogether, for housewives of the old school, with ovens to match, will still want the larger birds, but his race is nearly run. He is too leggy, say? the trade, and one must cut, cut, cut at these succulent members before ho can be forced into most ovens. And his breast? There is not enough meat on it for modern appetites.