GOLDEN VALLEY COLONY — The pigs had it so easy. Swine flu? The name that slammed barbecue lids shut on baby back ribs? A turkey should be so lucky.

Standing in the warmly lit poultry barn, the white turkeys stared curiously as their brethren hung upside down from a wagon wheel. And as neatly tailored men with well-trimmed beards and sharp knives took turns doling out the inevitable, it was clear that not everyone on hand for Thanksgiving would be walking away from the table.

“These are good turkeys, raised on corn and barley, all natural,” said Paul Hofer, the colony turkey boss. “If it’s not all natural, don’t even talk about it. People aren’t going to buy it.”

At this Hutterite colony in the foothills south of Ryegate, turkey slaughter day is like any another: You don your suit or black dress, put on your rubber boots and gloves and do the Lord’s work. You also make a pretty penny.

Turkeys have become a mainstay of most Hutterite economies. Poults are bought at midsummer and fattened through the fall until the final days before the holiday so they can be slaughtered and refrigerated instead of frozen like the mass-produced birds that dominate supermarket freezer cases.

Foodies have driven up the demand for the fresh birds, which can cost more — $1.70 a pound versus $1.29 a pound for a pre-sale frozen turkey. It doesn’t hurt that the birds have a back story, raised in rural Montana by pacifists observing 16th-century Anabaptist principles while operating some of the most efficient, modern farms in the state.

This year, the Hutterites cut the number of turkeys raised to 1,500, a dramatic reduction made out of demand and price concerns. Consumer demand for other products like milk and pork has sent payments plummeting.

Cheaper foods are in demand with national unemployment above 10 percent and frozen wages lagging behind inflation. Never-frozen natural turkeys don’t fit that bill.

“We usually go with 3,000, but with the economy like it is, I didn’t know,” Hofer said.

However demand didn’t dip. A large percentage of Golden Valley’s stock has already been bought by private businesses. A lumber company in Livingston bought 200. A jewelry maker in Columbus bought half that amount. Mountain View Colony, which sells turkeys the Monday before Thanksgiving at the old Gibson’s parking lot at 1313 Broadwater, earlier reported that private businesses bought most of their birds.

“People like them. I don’t know if there’s been an increase, but there’s a consistent demand,” said Denny Crick of Montana Harvest Natural Health Store.

Customers have been signing up for Golden Valley turkeys since Nov. 1, Crick said. Most will stop by Monday to retrieve their order from a refrigerator crowded with birds. The small ones are in the 15-pound range. The large oven-busters can be 24 pounds or more.

Hofer said he’ll hold some turkeys back for Christmas, but it’s nearly impossible to come up with a new flock of birds to meet demand. Raising turkeys is a slow process.

Hofer and a couple of boys acquire the birds as poults about 16 to 18 weeks before Thanksgiving and keep them on a grain diet capable of adding a pound a week. For the first month, the birds are also given vitamins for bone strength.

On slaughter day, it’s all hands on deck. Hofer and a half-dozen young men deliver the bad news to the turkeys before sunrise. Another 40 Hutterites pluck, clean and cool the birds in a state-certified, antiseptic processing facility. If John Hormel and Laura Ingalls Wilder ever met on a speed date, this is what it would look like: sharply dressed pilgrims lined up at stainless-steel tables, pulling giblets and plucking pinfeathers with the precision of a windup watch.

The work is fast-paced, as the Hutterites rush to cool the bird’s core body temperatures in vats of chilly water.

“It takes six hours at least, probably eight” to cool down a bird, said Jacob Kleinsasser.

The colony elder carted one chrome shopping cart full of turkeys after another to an icy tub just outside the slaughterhouse door. Turkeys lined the bottom of the tank like soft, pale boulders. And the ones Kleinsasser added with a heave sank accordingly.

Hofer is already working on his Christmas plan — geese.

Contact Tom Lutey at tlutey@billingsgazette.com or 657-1288.