Unlike Owen, the Bakers remain close to their brood until the bloody end. Without machines, each slaughter takes about two hours.

This occupies most of their Thanksgiving week, at a rate of five birds a day. "We hang them from a tree by their feet, and then my husband slits their throats," Baker says.

The husband and-wife team loosens the feathers by immersing the turkeys in hot water and then plucks the feathers before washing down the birds in baking soda.

It's not hard to figure why Jo Baker takes so much time with each turkey; her whole turkey-rearing technique follows from what she says is a respect for--and sentimental attachment to--the birds.

When they first arrive at Pilot Hill, the hapless turkeys don't automatically eat and drink on their own initiative.

Ever patient, Baker coaxes them along by mixing bits of glitter into their food.

Within days, Baker says, most of the turkeys have caught onto the idea of feed even without the added attraction of the sparkles.

Baker also has to herd the brood into shelter for the night; although chickens naturally seek the safety of the pen, turkeys demand extra guidance.

"They're not very bright, but they're sweet," she says.

Whether or not they engage in enough thought to seek freedom, these domestic turkeys lack the physical capacities needed to fly the coop.

"These turkeys don't fly, so the only time they escaped was when the pigs broke into the pen and broke their fence," Baker says. Even when given the opportunity, she says, the turkeys didn't go nearly as far as the pigs.

Although Baker and her husband have been raising turkeys off and on for the past 15 years, she has yet to tire of the birds she describes as slow-moving and sociable, if not exceptionally intelligent.

Despite that lack of smarts, Baker says she notices a definite response among the remaining turkeys as their fellow fowls disappear.

"I think those other turkeys would miss [the slaughtered turkeys], because they would call all day long," Baker says. "The first couple of days it seemed like their appetites dropped off."

Baker says that the turkeys became more reluctant to enter the barn used for slaughtering after the first day's victims failed to return. "I think they knew," she says.