Russian scientists breeding legless chickens
Following survey revelations about crippled chickens in UK battery hen farms, we have discovered that researchers in Russia are working to develop a new, legless chicken in a bid to overcome some of the issues related to battery poultry production.
Dr Aleksandr Polutivin, who leads up the project at the All-Russian Research Institute for Animal Health near Vladimir in Russia, says the problem is very real.
“Only this week there has been public comment in the United Kingdom about the effects on chickens of being battery reared,” Dr Polutivin said.
“The claims that chickens become crippled with malformed legs has been long about known, so we have started this project several years ago to stop this crippling.
“Our research shows us that the best solution is to have no legs at all, so no chickens can suffer this harm.”
“We have had to breed many thousands of chickens and grow then in similar conditions to be able to acquire enough crippled birds from which to breed. It was after over two years that we had our first legless hatchling, we brought us great excitement.
The research shows that chickens are just as happy with no legs and do not suffer stress of wanting to move when they know they cannot.
Dr Polutivin admits there are some down-sides to legless chickens.
“Of course there will be those who say chickens must have legs, otherwise a favourite part of the chicken will be lost - no more baked chicken legs.”
This is leading us to curtail our other research into breeding chickens with no wings. We do not wish to be upsetting to many people by preventing their access to wings.”
He said on the benefit side there would be no need to try to minimise the levels of weight gain possible for the immobile chickens. This could lead to amazing new chicken recipe books.
The first legless chicken breeds are expected to be commercially available in Russia later this year, with 2.2 billion legless broilers grown in Russia each year.
Locals at Vladimir will be ruing the success of the project - they have been receiving free chicken carcasses from the research project.
What I wanna know is when are we gonna start breeding cajun chicken trees?
mmm, mmm, finger licking good!