Tis the season for Sheri Minkner to feel a little guilty in the kitchen.

“Since raising these guys I don’t enjoy Thanksgiving nearly as much,” the Lincoln resident said. “I mean, it would be like if you had a pet cow and then had to turn around and eat them.”

Minker’s ranch is home to more than a dozen turkeys, which are grown not for their meat but their babies – Minker sells them to 4-H members as prized show turkeys. (She gets her Thanksgiving dinner from the supermarket.)

“My husband calls them useless pets,” Minker said.

They’re also called “heritage turkeys” because the poultry – with names like Bourbon Red and Lilac — bear little resemblance to the broad-breasted variety that make up 99.9 percent of turkeys in the American diet.

Meat-eating Americans will consume about 14 pounds of those turkeys each this year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with a couple of pounds of that coming next Thursday (and in turkey sandwiches for at least a week after).

But local poultry people know the birds are more than a great prelude to candied yams.

“They’re really sweet and they’re really tame,” said Bonnie Hayes of Roseville, who raised three broad-breasted turkeys this year. (They met their end last month.) “They’ll kind of follow you around and stuff.”

Still, Hayes doesn’t quibble with the old adage that turkeys are, well, bird brains.

“They really will drown in the rain,” she said.

Fifteen-year-old Spencer Barrow has raised meat and show turkeys for 4-H.

“Most people think they just come in white,” Barrow, of Penryn, said. “But there are actually eight different breeds of turkeys and they come in many different colors.”

Darlene Miller of Granite Bay is co-leader of Eureka 4-H. She purchased two turkeys – named Albert and Sophia – as chicks, and one of her hens raised them as her own until they grew big.

Now, she keeps them as pets

“They will follow me around since they know I will get them food,” Miller said. “But I can call to them from the house and they will gobble back.”

As for getting along with others on the Millers’ property, they get along – except with a rooster.

“I think it’s a guy thing,” Miller said.

Spencer contends the colorful, slimmer and rarer heritage breeds – which more closely resemble the turkeys hunted by early American colonists – are smarter than the meat birds. Those fowl are bred to be so heavy, they can hardly move after achieving their full weight.

Minker agrees. On a recent visit to her ranch, one of her heritage turkeys, named Eagle, followed around a reporter and even allowed a few pets, more like a puppy than a dog.

“Any dumb turkey stories you’ve heard have to be for the broad-breasted turkey,” she said.

Of course, in Placer County you don’t need to be an expert turkey-raiser to encounter the birds – wild turkeys can be sighted just about anywhere.

“Almost everybody I’ve talked to has seen wild turkeys,” Roseville Open Space Manager Brian Castelluccio said. He added that he’s yet to receive a complaint about the birds.

The county doesn’t keep records of wild flock sizes, though.

“It seems to be very robust from incidental observations,” said Josh Huntsinger, deputy agricultural commissioner.

Popular spots for the birds in Roseville are around water sources such as Linda Creek, Kaseberg Creek and Miners Ravine, Castelluccio said.

“The population could be growing for the mere fact that there’s not as many predators as there used to be,” he said.

They can get ornery. In Auburn earlier this year, residents in the Robie Point area reported downright mean birds were aggressively pecking at people. Experts said it was probably due to mating season.

Miller said she’s anything but a vegetarian, but having pet turkeys does change the relationship a bit.

“We love to eat turkey,” she said, “as long as we do not know their name.”

Taste these turkey facts

Benjamin Franklin argued that the turkey, and not the bald eagle, should be the national symbol of America.

Turkeys under 16 weeks old are called fryers; a roaster is 5 to 7 months old.

Turkeys are the only breed of poultry native to the Western Hemisphere.

A total of 250 million turkeys will be raised this year. That’s up from 105 million in 1970. At that time, they weighed an average of 17 pounds.

In 2008, U.S. turkeys weighed 7.9 billion pounds and were valued at $4.5 billion.

Three U.S. towns include the word “turkey”: Turkey, Texas, was the most populous in 2008, with 456 residents, followed by Turkey Creek, La. (361) and Turkey, N.C. (272). There are also nine townships around the country named Turkey, three in Kansas.