Free-range turkey business seems to be in fine feather

The business takes a bite out of the market.
NEW CARLISLE, Ohio (AP) -- It's not easy raising turkeys in the great outdoors. Coyotes like to stop by for a snack, and even thunderstorms can pose a threat.
But Bowman & amp; Landes has been steadily carving out a market for free-range turkeys, resisting the trend toward indoor-raised birds to stick with the old-fashioned way.
"They're just a healthier, happier turkey when they're running around," said co-owner Carl Bowman. "We think it's a more tender, juicy taste."
Bowman & amp; Landes has one of the largest free-range turkey operations in the state. About 60,000 turkeys are raised on a 140-acre farm near this western Ohio town and an additional 13,000, at a farm in north central Ohio.
Happy, healthy
The white-feathered birds prowl the grassy fields, pecking at cracked corn and filling the air with clucks, chirps and gobbles.
"A stressed-out animal is releasing all those bad hormones just like they do in people," Bowman said. "So our object is to keep the turkey as stress-free as possible."
Most turkeys in the United States were raised outdoors in the 1940s and '50s, when turkeys were consumed primarily at Thanksgiving. The young turkeys could be raised in the warm-weather months and be ready for slaughter by November, before cold weather moved in.
But as turkey began to be consumed year-round, many farmers chose to raise the birds year-round and shield them from winter weather in barns and other enclosures.
Mike Lilburn, a nutritionist at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster, said more than 90 percent of U.S. turkeys are raised indoors.
Indoor-raised turkeys are generally larger, have more breast meat and sell for about half the price of free-range birds, which consume more food, take more labor to raise, and can suffer a higher mortality rate because of predators.
Even Bowman keeps his turkeys inside for the first six weeks of their lives, in part so the young poults don't get carried away by owls.
Coyotes are a threat
But coyotes are always a threat.
"If they're really hungry, they can jump over the fence; or they go under," Bowman said. "It's pretty hard to keep them out."
Bowman uses llamas, a Great Pyrenees dog and even a donkey to try to keep the coyotes at bay.
But there's little he can do about the weather. Earlier this summer hundreds of his turkeys died when a freak thunderstorm kicked up, bringing driving rain and 40 mile-an-hour winds.
Most of his customers are in southwest Ohio, but he also sells in Toledo, Cleveland and other areas.