{"id":30558,"date":"2023-11-21T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-21T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gov-polis-pardons-four-turkeys-for-colorados-new-thanksgiving-tradition\/"},"modified":"2023-11-21T16:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T16:30:00","slug":"gov-polis-pardons-four-turkeys-for-colorados-new-thanksgiving-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gov-polis-pardons-four-turkeys-for-colorados-new-thanksgiving-tradition\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Polis pardons four turkeys for Colorado\u2019s new Thanksgiving tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Colorado
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis officially pardons four turkeys, including Gus, foreground, at the Governor\u2019s Mansion on Monday, Nov. 20, 2023, thus sparing them from someone\u2019s Thanksgiving table later in the week. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Monday, surrounded by farmers, students studying agriculture, and active military members at the Governor\u2019s Mansion, Polis took a page out of the presidential book and pardoned some lucky turkeys.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re welcoming four turkeys to the mansion today,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were all treated to a stay here last night. They all slept here at the Governor\u2019s Mansion and our kids helped name them. And the four turkeys are Gus, that\u2019s the male, and then Maple, Matilda, and Pumpkin are the three females.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pardoned turkeys will live out the rest of their lives at Luvin Arms Animal Sanctuary in Weld County.<\/p>\n

Polis said he wanted to start the tradition to recognize poultry farmers who have endured a devastating avian flu outbreak, which has circulated in Colorado since April 2022.<\/p>\n

Since the highly pathogenic avian flu was first identified in Colorado, over 6.2 million commercial poultry have been killed, either from exposure to the disease or preemptive culling, according to federal agriculture officials. Exposure to avian flu spells nearly certain death for birds, and there is no cure or vaccine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been a tough year because of the avian flu, and since agriculture is one of our leading economic industries, we want to encourage Coloradans to support Colorado-grown produce as they do their final Thanksgiving shopping and get ready to entertain family and friends,\u201d Polis said.<\/p>\n

Colby Townsend, who owns Hayden Fresh Farms with his wife in Routt County, supplied the turkeys that the governor pardoned. He said it\u2019s been a difficult few years for poultry farmers, who have had to increase biosecurity on their farms to protect their flock. Losing a flock means losing out on revenue and spending hundreds of thousands, or even millions, to replace their birds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been very fortunate and we do have all of our animals, they\u2019re free-range,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re out in the pasture, so we are wide open to infection. We\u2019ve just been very lucky, quite honestly, and we do have biosecurity measures that we take, but when we have wild birds in the population that can fly over at any point, they could infect us.<\/p>\n

Colorado saw a lull in domestic avian flu outbreaks over the summer, but two small, backyard outbreaks have been reported since October. While non-commercial backyard and wild bird cases continue to pop up, there hasn\u2019t been an outbreak among Colorado\u2019s commercial flocks since last December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis officially pardons four turkeys, including Gus, foreground, at the Governor\u2019s Mansion on Monday, Nov. 20, 2023, thus sparing them from someone\u2019s Thanksgiving table later in the week. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News) On Monday, surrounded by farmers, students studying agriculture, and active military members at the Governor\u2019s Mansion, Polis took a page […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28,1753,818],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines","tag-holiday-or-vacation","tag-jared-polis"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30558"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}