Ultimate Convenience Food : Chickens Born Ready for Frying Pan

It may ruffle your feathers, but two naked chickens hatched on a Petaluma farm will never be dressed.

Francine Bradley, a poultry adviser at the University of California, Davis, made a special trip to see Jane Gianini’s 15-week-old pair of featherless fowl, a male and a female.

Gianini was dreaming of making bucks from her two pre-plucked clucks. “Can you imagine?” she said. “You wouldn’t have to pluck them.”

Bradley told Gianini the mutation was quite rare and that, if bred, the pair should produce featherless offspring.

But she told Gianini that the birds have little value as far as supermarket sales are concerned.

Their skin is so fragile it would never survive a trip through a processing plant, and birds with torn skin lose part of their value, Bradley said.

Gianini says the chickens will be kept for breeding, although they are quite delicate because of their lack of feathery protection.

Artificial insemination may have to be used because of the danger of scratches if the chickens were allowed to do what comes naturally.

Gianini said that though the chickens may never be dressed for the dinner table, she’s thinking of whipping up some little coats for them. “They sunburn easily.”