Feathers on chickens don’t help them fly and may be fluttering in the
way of producer profits.
Avigdor Cahaner, an agriculture professor at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, Israel, said his research to improve broiler chicken
production has led him to a featherless bird.
The red, crossbred bird stays cleaner due to its lack of feathers and
cooler, which is important in hot climates like the Middle East and
Asia. But for North American producers, its advantages may be lower
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processing costs and improved health.
“It would cost a lot less to kill and process these birds. There are no
feathers to get in the way … they also tend to be healthier due to
their lack of feathers,” said Cahaner in an interview.
His research is focused on producing broiler chickens that deposit
their fat more evenly and grow more rapidly with less wasted feed.
Using a variety of biotechnological techniques, he identified and
marked the genes needed to crossbreed a feathered broiler with a small
featherless chicken that contains a gene that suppresses feather
production.
Two different genes can be introduced into the larger meat chicken to
suppress feathers: a naked neck gene and a scaleless gene.
The naked neck gene reduces feather production by 20-40 percent. In
field testing in Asia and the Middle East, the reduced-feather birds
were more productive mainly due to their ability to withstand high
temperatures.
The scaleless gene eliminates the development of all feathers,
producing completely naked chickens. This mutation is found in a
slow-growing laying hen.
Cahaner produced the fully naked chicken by introducing, through
crossbreeding, the scaleless gene into a fast-growing meat-type,
broiler bird.
The result of his breeding with the scaleless gene was a large bird
without feathers that gained weight faster than traditional broilers,
with less fat and a higher meat yield per pound of feed consumed.
His research is showing that heat tolerance and processing efficiency
will pay off in hot climates and may have value in cold ones as well.
“Indeed, the processing advantages of featherless chickens may justify
their production in heated barns. Even in the north, summer often
requires cooling the barn …. There are many advantages to losing the
feathers, such as avoiding costs of plucking and the damages to skin
during this stage, very little skin fat … and higher meat yield,” he
said.
The chicken may also reduce environmental problems. Feather removal
requires large amounts of water that become contaminated with feathers,
manure and fat in the plucking process.
“We are also monitoring welfare aspects, and so far haven’t found any
negative effect,” he said.
“We grow on litter, featherless broilers, along with normally
feathered ones, and there is no problem of picking, pecking or
cannibalism.”
Before releasing further breeding information, Cahaner and his funders,
the Israeli Poultry Board and a German-Israel agricultural research
foundation, are seeking commercial investment to take the naked chicken
to the marketplace.
He expects to be producing the naked red birds within two years.
