Where Do Turkeys Go After Pardons? College.

They’ve stayed in five-star hotels. They’ve had paparazzi training. They’ve walked a red carpet and met the president of the United States himself.

Now, they will be making their way by car to the college towns in their home states, where they’ll live out their golden years. When they finally arrive at their destination, they do so in style: in crates large enough to fit a Great Dane and embossed with the presidential seal. Waiting for them are the scientists who have been dying to meet them.

They are the presidentially pardoned turkeys. Having been saved from the dinner table, they will now be able to pursue a life at college.

This year, presidential turkeys Liberty and Bell will be retiring to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities where the faculty of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences has been preparing for months to receive them.

“I think it’s an honor to have these presidential turkeys spend the rest of their lives here at the University of Minnesota,” says Kahina Boukherroub, an assistant professor in avian reproductive physiology. “Minnesota is the number-one turkey producer in the country, so it’s just even more meaningful for us that we have them here.”

Going to colleges is a fairly recent development for presidentially pardoned turkeys. Over the decades, turkeys have found homes across Virginia in Frying Pan Farm Park and at George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon. Under George W. Bush, turkeys were sent to Disneyland, to fulfill the role of honorary grand marshal in a fall parade.

Further Reading

• How to Talk About Higher Ed at Thanksgiving Dinner, 2022 Edition
• Turkeys Go Off to College After Presidential Pardon
• How to Talk About Higher Ed Around the Thanksgiving Table: a Brief Guide
• Here’s Smarty-Pants, Home for the Holidays

In 2016, the National Turkey Federation started sending the turkeys to Virginia Tech, which created an enclosure dubbed “Gobbler’s Rest” for the occasion.

That changed again in 2020. Over the last three years, the turkeys have gone to universities in their home state, each with robust animal-science programs: Iowa State University, Purdue University, and North Carolina State University.

“This opportunity to have the turkeys is also an opportunity to highlight the work that the university does,” Boukherroub says. “We work with the turkey industry really closely to improve the well-being of the turkeys, their health, their productivity, and the sustainability of the industry in general, and also to just raise awareness on the avian influenza, for example, that’s been decimating our flocks.”

Boukherroub has spent the last several months in a flurry of video conferences and email chains with colleagues at the other universities that have housed presidential turkeys. There’s a lot to discuss: care, feed, life span, transportation.

Waiting for them in Minnesota are faculty and graduate students eager to look after Liberty and Bell in their new home: a large enclosure with its own day-night cycle, temperature set at 70 to 72 degrees, and access to food and water (they like their water cold, according to Luna Akhtar, a microbiologist who will in be charge of their care).

Courtesy of Gregory Fraley

All of this preparation, of course, may need to be altered. Each turkey has its own personality, Akhtar says, and will let you know if it’s uncomfortable. Turkeys tend to like fresh food, but when it comes to their wood-shaving bedding, they prefer a bit of age, because the older it gets, the softer it feels.

Peanut Butter and Jelly, the pardoned turkeys from 2021 who now live at Purdue University, also have their own preferences and personalities.

“Peanut Butter definitely wears the pants,” Gregory Fraley, an associate professor in the department of animal sciences, says. “He’s a little bossier. Jelly just kind of hangs out.”

Peanut Butter and Jelly live “a pretty cushy life” in their own house with a fenced yard under a copse of trees on Purdue’s poultry farm. They’re free to strut in and out as they please, and they enjoy enrichment activities designed by students. Their favorites? Bales of straw that they can tear apart. For snacks, there are blueberries and dried mealworms.

How did these lucky turkeys get the chance to be presented to the president and saved from the dinner table?

Each year, the chairman of the National Turkey Federation designates a turkey farmer to raise the “Presidential Flock.” These turkeys are raised like other food turkeys but with some notable differences.

From a young age, they listen to loud music to get used to the sounds of crowds. They are often visited by school-age children who learn about the turkey industry. This year’s presidential flock was taken to the Minnesota State Fair to help them become socialized.

By the time the universities get the turkeys, Boukherroub says, “they’re almost like pets.”

“The first two we had were extremely friendly and very easy to get along with,” says Dave Linker, agricultural-programs coordinator at Virginia Tech. “They seemed to live for the attention.”

Those two turkeys, Tater and Tot, lived their life in minor fame at “Gobbler’s Rest” — an old judging pavilion (a place where livestock are judged in agricultural competitions) turned turkey house, which quickly became a destination at the school. Students would come by to see the turkeys behind a glass partition, in their room painted with bucolic scenes. Tater and Tot quickly became unofficial mascots for the university — whose mascot was already, coincidentally, a turkey.

“Everybody had a selfie with a turkey,” Linker says.

For Linker, it was a relief to see these turkeys go elsewhere, because losing them, he said, was hard.

“Over the years of having them and then losing them — because they are not long-lived animals — it’s kind of sad,” Linker says. “And we were ready to stop having that experience.”

Turkeys only live about five to six years, though sometimes health issues can end their lives earlier. Because the presidentially pardoned turkeys are meat-birds, they’re selectively bred to be top-heavy and carry extra weight, which can cause foot and heart issues. Other dangers, like avian flu, are also a concern.

For Liberty and Bell, at the University of Minnesota, this means they’ll be checked multiple times a day by faculty and students. They’ll also have regular visits to the vet.

But when the turkeys do eventually die, after living a full life, Boukherroub says the campus will hold a celebration of their lives and memorialize them on campus.

“Like with a statue?” I ask.

“Well, who knows?” says Boukherroub.