Wow - that’s a lot of turkey!

Second Harvest Food Bank kicked off its annual Thanksgiving Turkey Drive with a rather large donation — 800 birds from the region’s largest poultry company.

The turkeys, which weighed 14,000 pounds, will provide enough meat for 16,000 meals, Second Harvest said in a news release. The food bank serves Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.

According to Second Harvest, “13.9 percent (and one in five children), approximately 98,650 individuals in San Joaquin County and 70,590 individuals in Stanislaus County, are food insecure” — meaning they don’t have a stable source of nutritious food.

Foster Farms isn’t limiting its holiday giving to this area. The company plans to deliver 126,000 pounds of turkey — more than 10 truckloads — to food banks and community groups in California, Oregon and Washington, the news release said. The company also donated $100,000 and 40,000 pounds of poultry to Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa to help people affected by the recent wildfires in that area.

Locally, Second Harvest will distribute the turkeys in the coming weeks to help feed local families this Thanksgiving.

For more information on Second Harvest, go to http://www.localfoodbank.org/.

This story was originally published November 6, 2017 at 2:22 PM with the headline "Wow - that’s a lot of turkey!."