When Jo Baker first met her Thanksgiving dinner last summer, it fit into the palm of her hand.

Small, white and fluffy, the young turkey and its 20 cohorts peeked out from their wooden crate at the local post office, only a day after having been hatched halfway across the country.

Already the domestic turkeys had experienced their first and only taste of flight, on their way from America's Heartland to the island of Martha's Vineyard, where Baker and her husband R.W. run their Pilot Hill Farm.

Between birth and their Thanksgiving-week demise each year, the turkeys grow quite substantially--from several ounces to more than 50 pounds in some isolated cases.

They grow closer to Jo Baker's heart, as well.

"They're big gentle giants, and they have a lot of personality," Baker says. "Doing the turkey chores was one of my favorite things."

But the "turkey chores," of course, have one purpose, one that is not so pleasant for the "big gentle giants."

Thanksgiving week, Jo and R.W. Baker slaughtered 21 turkeys--their entire brood.

And the carnage of 21 deaths is nothing compared to that of larger turkey farms, which raise turkeys year round and kill thousands for Thanksgiving alone.

Take Gwen's Poultry Farm in Needham, where more than 3,000 turkeys are sold each Thanksgiving, according to owner Douglas Owen.

Owen has managed to distance himself emotionally from the birds he raises more efficiently than Jo Baker.

"They don't have much personality. They're a little on the stupid side," Owen says.

Due to Owen's volume, he sends his turkeys to a commercial slaughter house, where workers first slit the necks and allow the blood to drain. After immersion in scalding water, the birds go through a de-feathering machine equipped with rubber pins.

The heads are chopped off, the entrails removed, and the feet cut off.

The entire process takes only about ten minutes per turkey. Then the turkeys are immersed for two hours in ice water to lower the still life-level body temperature.