ARE YOU F**KING KIDDING ME? DESIGNER TURKEY'S ARE $14.00 A POUND!

Hold onto your giblets: Designer turkeys are flying off store shelves - even at prices as high as $14 a pound.
That's a $168 dent in your Thanksgiving budget if you're hunting a tasty 12-pounder.

Manhattan architect Stephen Alesch dished out more than $200 Sunday for a pair of Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch Heritage free-range turkeys, priced at $11 a pound and dubbed the "Mercedes-Benz" of birds by Dean & Deluca staff.

"They hang out in open fields," Alesch, 45, said in defense of his three-figure fowl.

"It's all about what it's been like for them for their one or two years of life."

But even Alesch had his limit.

He passed over the D'Artagnan wild turkey, selling for $14 a pound, that looked like a runway model version of the holiday staple - pale, thin, and overpriced. D'Artagnan's website boasts that their turkeys are "farm-raised from the original wild breed."

Still, there are plenty of options for cost-conscious turkey lovers. Chains like Pathmark and Key Food were hawking their plump poultry yesterday for as low as 39 cents a pound.

Staten Island resident Sarina Sanfelice, 82, who lives in fear of the wild turkeys roaming her neighborhood, said she'll go to ShopRite for her main dish.

Anything else would be bird-brained. "Who would eat a wild turkey anyway?" Sanfelice squawked. "They are ugly."

Harry Rosenblum, co-owner of The Brooklyn Kitchen in Williamsburg, said he sold $150 wild turkeys last year, but he's scaled back and is now selling $5.99-a-pound turkeys raised on Amish farms in Pennsylvania.

"It's important to try as best as you can to find out where your turkey is coming from," Rosenblum said.

Shoppers at Pathmark on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn said they couldn't care less if their dead bird had a happy life - it just needs to taste good.

"I think they all grow up on the same farm," said nurse Dawn Christie, 42, who was buying a Shady Brooks Farm frozen turkey for 39 cents a pound.

"It doesn't have to be organic. Just season it properly."