Our Acton Sanctuary’s eldest turkey is sassy and brash: she struts around the aviary like she owns the place and dismissively squawks should anyone object.

But beneath that tough exterior and any ruffled feathers, Henrietta is a stalwart guardian of her flock. For years, she’s overseen and protected our smallest chickens! She’s the kind of mother—and now grandmother—figure who shows her love just by being there.

Henrietta may not be one for hugs, but she sure takes her family under her wing. By day, this doting “grandturkey” follows the littles around and settles in among her favorites to bask in the sun. At night, she’s perched in the barn alongside them.

She has great maternal intuition—despite never having raised her own baby poults.

Though turkeys and chickens are flock animals, few domesticated birds even meet their families, let alone their mothers. Each year, untold millions of turkeys hatch in industrial incubators and are prepared, at mere hours old, for food production. Two hundred forty-five million will live long enough to die at slaughter.

These fragile, frightened beings simply need a loving touch; instead, they’re crushed against the bodies of other panicked babies and handled roughly by harried workers racing against their production clocks.

Compared to their wild relatives, domesticated turkeys are bred to grow as large as possible—and as fast as possible. Typically, they’re slaughtered for food at four to five months of age. They don’t reach sexual maturity until a little later, though; by that time, those used for this purpose are already too large to reproduce naturally.

So, all reproduction on mass turkey farms happens through artificial insemination: semen is forcibly “milked” from the males and then thrust into females to fertilize their eggs. And in the end, these exploited parents never get to raise a baby.

Alas, Henrietta never met her mother. The young turkey didn’t have much time left, herself. But then, someone helped her escape.

We don’t exactly know where Henrietta came from (her rescue predates her time at Farm Sanctuary), but we know she was just a month old. That was over a decade ago!

It’s been such a joy watching Henrietta grow and mature into a deeply revered elder and companion. Her inner circle has the smallest rooster boys—including David Bowie, King, and the rambunctious Li Mu Bai—along with some of the smaller hens. They might appear to be a mismatched group, but they’re family in all the ways that matter. These “birds of a feather” are a loud and sassy bunch, and Henrietta is head of the house.

And sometimes, our closest family members are the ones we choose. Henrietta coexists just fine with other turkeys but has often been indifferent to their company. She also prefers to keep her space from humans, despite receiving love and kindness from an early age. Of course, it’s nice when an animal decides and trusts to love us back, but it’s not a requirement of Sanctuary life: we’re here for them, and not the other way around.

In return, we give Henrietta the space to be herself: the feisty, sometimes crotchety, but devoted old lady we know and love.

Turkeys have so much to teach us! Unfortunately, some people use phrases like “bird brain” to excuse exploiting them for food. In reality, turkeys display marked intelligence—from impressive visual and vocal skills to their ability to form complex social relationships. (And it goes without saying that hurting someone just because “we can” is problematic.)

The meat industry changed how these turkeys live and grow, but they’ll never change who they are: flock-oriented, social creatures who thrive with love.

Henrietta may not always show it outright, but we see she finds great pride in mentoring her little loves. She’s a kindred spirit for these once-orphaned chicks, and we can see that their bond means as much to her as it does them. She’s the type of mom whose love you never have to question—the kind who tells it like it is and has your back no matter what.