British Turkeys on British Shelving
I guess that most of us will have had our fill of British Turkeys over the last few weeks. If you think you had a lot of breast, leg and wing over Christmas and New Year, have a look above at the photo one of our customers sent to us over the break.
The week before we broke for Christmas one of our customers ordered quite a bit of our Nylon coated shelving to populate a Cold Room they had supplied. As a lot of jobs at this time of year are, time was of the essence. Hence, the shelves were placed into one of our vans and ran up into the wilds of Northumbria the same day that we got the order.
From production in Knaresborough to the cold room in Northumbria is just shy of 100 miles.
No sooner had the shelving been delivered and erected you can see that it quickly filled up with a huge selection of the Nations Number 1 choice for Christmas Dinner.
In total 211 birds were stored on the shelves.
Let’s hope what you’re going to read next doesn’t give you indigestion. The smallest bird on the shelves was a modest 10lbs whilst the largest bird was an unbelievable 72lb. On average each of the Craven Shelves contained around 300lbs of british turkeys, well below the maximum weight loading.
The photo got us talking in the office and we came up with the following turkey facts courtesy of the very interesting www.britishturkey.co.uk website –
- The average weight of a Christmas turkey is 5.5kg/12lb.
- Approx. 10 million are eaten in UK every Christmas.
- In the US approximately 60 million are eaten at Thanksgiving
- Israel is the world’s biggest eater of turkey at 13kg per capita (UK 4.8kg)
Furthermore, the world record fastest time to pluck three turkeys is 11 min 30.16 sec. This was achieved by Paul Kelly of Kelly Turkeys, at Little Claydon Farm, Essex, United Kingdom, on 13 November 2008. Attempted as part of Gordon Ramsay’s Cookalong show, Paul went head to head against Gordon Ramsay who plucked three turkeys in 11 min 31.78 sec.
Source: Guinness Book of Records
Additionally, the world record fastest time to carve a turkey is 3 min 19.47 sec. Achieved also by Paul Kelly of Kelly Turkeys at Little Claydon Farm, Essex, UK, on 3 June 2009. He went head-to-head against local butcher David Harrison at an event to celebrate the 25th birthday of KellyBronze turkeys. This is Paul’s second world record along with the fastest time to pluck three turkeys. Source: Guinness Book of Records
In fact, the world record for the largest gathering of people dressed as turkeys is 661 and was accomplished at the 44th Annual Capital One Bank Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot in Dallas, Texas, USA on 24 November 2011.
Enough Turkey, Happy New Year.
