Photo Recall: Fair buff of the turkey egg

While Kiwi families are busy planning their Christmas dinners, Kent Matheson remembers sanding turkey eggs on his parents farm in Paparimu, south of Auckland. Photo / NZ Herald. Photo Researcher / Emma Walter

Kent Matheson can't remember the reason why he used to sit in the family garage with a bunch of kids sanding turkey eggs. His father clears up that childhood mystery more than 30 years later.

This week when the Herald on Sunday talks to Kent's parents, Brian and Anne Matheson, still on the farm at Paparimu, they confirm the sanding story.

Kent, his older sister, Dale, and younger brother Craig would help sand freshly-laid turkey eggs - part of the cleaning process - to put in the incubator for hatching. A wash in water potentially would harm the embryos, says Brian.

When the Herald came calling in November 1975, Kent, then aged 2, was helping his father dish out feed for the turkeys, destined to be fresh or frozen Bushmere Turkeys (sold by Foodtown), with a recipe by Tui Flower on the outside.

Back in the 70s and 80s, the Mathesons hatched up to 30,000 eggs and sold 20,000 fresh and frozen turkeys at peak times. But as turkey farming became less economic, they got out of rearing and moved increasingly into breeding, turning the bulk of the farm over to a sharemilker in the 90s.

Kent remembers early morning runs to Auckland Airport with his mother, the car loaded with boxes of day-old chicks to be sent to South Island farms concerned about inbreeding.

Every so often the family would have a turkey meal, the result of a turkey that didn't make the grade or was injured.

Brian says: "Our kids were brought up on turkey eggs. We'd get a few hundred eggs every day at the peak."

Anne remembers the huge double yolkers. "I used to cook custards and they were beautiful. So thick."

But turkey faming wasn't an easy way to earn a living. For a start, says Brian, turkeys are stupid. Six turkeys would try to sit on the same egg, suffocating the turkey on the bottom.

The family would herd the birds out of the gullies down towards the farm sheds, only for the flock to scatter when a Cessna - with its engine switched off - glided overhead.

Trainee pilots from Ardmore aerodrome would do engine failure training over the farm's airstrip but the turkeys, thinking the silent plane was a hawk, would panic and fly into trees and bushes.

If the power went off in the sheds, the chicks would huddle together in a corner for warmth, smothering the smaller ones.

These days, Kent and his German wife, Stephanie, live in St Heliers where Kent, a software architect, works from home for a UK-based company he also worked for in London.

Kent's not sure if he'll eat turkey this Christmas. Dinner is at his aunt's house and his mother is in charge of the strawberries and pavlova - made with eight hen eggs rather than four turkey eggs.