Joseph Edgecomb / The Collegian

Fresno State students and faculty have been working all year long to make 20-plus pound Thanksgiving turkeys available for purchase at the Rue and Gwen Gibson Farm Market.

Thanksgiving turkeys are available for $1.19 per pound.

While some Zacky Farms’ turkeys are being advertised to be sold as low as 87 cents per pound or as high as $1.69 per pound, Fresno State students who work at the market say their turkeys are just fresher.

The fresh turkeys are student-raised at the University Farm on campus, and then processed for meat by Zacky Farms in Fresno.

The public-private partnership between Fresno State and Zacky Farms helps students by giving them a chance to raise a real product, this time with a little extra significance — somebody’s Thanksgiving dinner.
“I’d say they’re a lot fresher,” said John Gonsalves, a sports marketing major at Fresno State. “They’re raised here, and they come from just down the street.”

Another thing that stands out about Fresno State’s turkeys is that they are considerably larger than the average store-bought alternative.

Most turkeys advertised in local supermarket ads top out at 16 to 20 pounds. Fresno State’s turkeys are even larger.

“The turkeys range anywhere from 18 to 25 pounds,” said Fresno State student Jason Ferreira, who is also an ag ambassador and assistant manager at the Gibson Farm Market.

“They are very large birds, from the standpoint of when they are alive to when they are processed,” Ferreira said. “They are all student-produced at the student farm on campus. We raised them and took care of them.”
While Ferreira couldn’t pinpoint everything the turkeys were fed during the past year, he said the turkeys were fed a balanced ration of proper nutrients including corn and oats.

Turkeys are sent to Zacky Farms to be processed; part of that process involves adding flavor to the turkeys.

They are injected with a solution that includes turkey broth, salt, sodium phosphate and sugar. This solution is supposed to give the turkeys a quality everyone is looking for — juiciness.

While the students and faculty behind the scenes are getting some credit for raising the turkeys, they aren’t exactly profiting from them.

“All the money that is being received from our sales of the turkeys gets put back into the agricultural program to raise turkeys again next year,” Ferreira said.

Besides selling its product, the University Farm is also donating frozen turkeys to the Poverello House to provide Thanksgiving meals for the homeless.

While eating turkey is a Thanksgiving tradition, some families enjoy variety.

The Rue and Gwen Gibson Farm Market is also selling fresh hams ranging from 7 to 15 pounds.

The market will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, so there are only three days left to pick up a Fresno State fresh Thanksgiving turkey.

The market is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.