Expert from OSU talks turkey.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

CORVALLIS - They look funny. They sound funny. They walk funny.

And if someone once called you one, it probably didn't make you feel like a rocket scientist. Or even a poultry scientist, for that matter.

But on this Thanksgiving Day, Tom Savage, a poultry scientist himself at Oregon State University, wants you to know: The turkey - that big, fat, tasty, juicy bird many of us will enthusiastically bite into today - is not stupid, even if he has once again arrived belly-up on your dining room table.

"I've always viewed turkeys as smart animals with personality, character and a keen awareness of their surroundings," Savage says. "The dumb tag simply doesn't fit."

Savage, who has studied turkeys, chickens and other poultry for three decades, decided earlier this month to speak out about the turkey's intelligence after being interviewed by a writer for The Scientist, a research magazine in upstate New York.

The writer, Ricki Lewis, was asking Savage about a turkey genome project that he and several other animal science professors around the country are working on to improve turkey production and meat quality, when she insinuated that turkeys weren't the smartest creatures around.

You might say the comment ruffled Savage's feathers.

"I said, `Let's correct some myths,' '' Savage says in his thick Boston accent. "As scientists, we have an obligation to correct things."

Savage, 59, has photographs in his office of turkeys with their heads cocked so far back it looks as if their necks are either made of rubber or they're broken. Turkeys have been known to keep their heads in this position and stare up at the sky - even when it's raining.

It's not because they're stupid, though, Savage says. It's actually a genetically caused nervous disorder called tetanic torticollar spasms, a condition Savage studied and identified in the early 1990s.

Savage was the head of OSU's turkey research program for 14 years before it disbanded in the mid-1990s, a reflection of Oregon's dwindling turkey processing industry and budget cuts. Back then, it was not uncommon to find Savage socializing with them. "I'd go into their pens and talk with them," Savage says. "I'm sure some students thought, `Oh, he's lost it.' ''

Alas, the turkeys are no more at OSU, leaving Savage to talk turkey with chickens and quails.

"The only turkeys we have now are in administration," Savage jokes.

Robert Plamondon, who refers to Savage as "Mr. Turkey," and his wife, Karen Black, one of Savage's former students, raise about 50 turkeys a year at Norton Creek Farms in Blodgett 18 miles west of here. They also don't buy into the "dumb turkey" myth.

"Our turkeys are not dumb," Plamondon says. "They're smarter than chickens."

A visit to the farm a week before Thanksgiving finds about 50 plump "bourbon red" turkeys hanging out in a field with a few ducks, some geese and one llama that seems irritated by the turkeys' constant gobbling - more of a high-pitched yelping sound, really.

They are (make that "were" - most are in someone's oven today) brown-and-white feathered birds and extremely curious. Although they do not enjoy being petted, they walk right up and look at you with a sideways glance. They seem to want something (a means of escape?), but it's as if they don't know how to ask. Several of the males puff out their chests and expand their wings.

"They're just showing off for the other males," Black says.

Most turkey farms in Oregon have disappeared in the past decade as the turkey industry consolidated and many of the commercial processing plants left the state, says Bruce Pokarney, director of communications at the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

In fact, Aaron Silverman at Greener Pastures, a co-op farm in Noti, has the only significant turkey farm left in Lane County, raising about 300 turkeys a year, he says.

A lot of the "dumb" label for turkeys has to do with how they've been raised in recent decades, Silverman says. Domestic turkeys have been selectively bred to develop larger, broader breasts for the consumer. In fact, their breasts have become so large that they can't even mate, or forage for food, and have to be artificially inseminated, Savage says.

Almost all commercially produced turkeys nationwide are now artificially inseminated, he says.

Silverman says this isn't helping turkeys become any smarter. Most turkeys in America are raised en masse in production facilities in California and the Midwest, cooped up in barns. "A lot of their instincts and natural intelligence have been removed," Silverman says.

His birds are raised outside and allowed to forage for food, piquing their curiosity, he says.

Savage disagrees that artificial insemination has lessened the intelligence of turkeys. "The desire (to mate) is there, although we've created some problems for them," he says. "If they were dumb, they wouldn't still have this motivation."

tur-key (tur'ke) n. - *1 any of a family (Meleagrididae) of large, gallinaceous North American birds with a small, naked head and spreading tail, including a wild or domesticated species (Meleagris gallopavo) bred as poultry and a wild species of Central America, with eyespots on the tail *2 (slang) a failure: said esp. of a theatrical production *3 (slang) an inept, stupid, or unpleasant person

- Webster's New World College Dictionary

CAPTION(S):

Tom Savage, a professor at Oregon State University, examines turkey embryos. He dedicated much of his career to study of the fowl's odd behaviors.