On Thanksgiving, turkeys are usually a comfort food and the main attraction at the dinner table. But on one farm just outside Nashville, Tennessee, the birds offer a different kind of comfort — cuddle therapy.
"You can get on the ground in front of them, and you can scootch up real close so they're right here," Ellie Laks, founder of the Gentle Barn, said as she sat down in front of a turkey named Serena. "Then you can kiss their fuzzy pink heads and just pet them and talk to them."
The act of cuddling a turkey is just like it sounds: It's a chance to slow down, sit with a turkey and gobble up a connection you might not expect.
"The majority of people who come to the Gentle Barn and cuddle a turkey for the first time burst into tears because they're so surprised at their unexpected show of affection," Laks said.
She founded the original Gentle Barn in 1999 in California's San Fernando Valley, a lifelong dream come true. In 2015, she opened a second location in Tennessee with her husband.
"It was all because of a cow named Dudley. He was here in Nashville, lost a foot because of an accident, hobbling around in tremendous pain, and the rancher could only do so much," Laks said.
"A friend of his reached out to 200 sanctuaries to see if someone could take him in, and no one was able to, so she called us all the way in California and said, 'I know you're far away. I don't know what to do. Can you at least give me advice?'"
Instead, Laks and her husband flew to Dudley and helped find him a bovine surgeon and a prosthetic foot.
They brought him to UT Knoxville for amputations, surgeries, acupuncture and underwater treadmill therapy. When it was time for him to be discharged, Laks said, "we didn't want to drive him all the way to California, so we opened a location here."
Now, the Gentle Barn has more than 200 rescue animals from turkeys and chickens to sheep, cows, and goats. Over the last 26 years, it has welcomed more 1 million visitors, many coming for turkey cuddle therapy.
In addition to school field trips and private tours, the barn offers therapeutic sessions. "It was always my dream to be able to help animals and then partner with them to heal and help hurting humans," Laks said.
Volunteer Nicole Downs had never been on a farm before visiting the Gentle Barn.
"My first experiences here were with chicken cuddling, and I fell in love with the chickens," said Downs. "It was a natural progression then to want to cuddle with the turkeys."
The volunteer is now a weekly visitor and says these cuddle sessions have been a game-changer in helping her manage her anxiety.
"It has become my kind of go-to grounding space for if I'm having an anxiety attack," said Downs. "We have so many things available to us now that we can put in our toolkit, but this is by far the best."
"It's therapy that you didn't know you needed until you do it, and then you're like, Where was this all fof my life?" she said.
Laks said the farm is a sanctuary for animals and people alike.
"As depression and anxiety come to an all time rise, I would invite people to come out to the gentle barn and find the love and nurturing here," she said. "We need each other, and we need the animals, and they're here for us."
On Thursday, the Gentle Barn is hosting a "Gentle Thanksgiving," a day dedicated to connecting and cuddling with turkeys.
Laks hopes visitors will see that underneath it all, we're all the same. "There's just so much unconditional love and gentleness, and I don't know, there's not a lot of that in the world today, so sometimes you have to get it from a turkey."