Saturday 8 July 2023

For Myself,

a naked chicken does not sort of look right,


but apart from the obvious, ease of plucking, they have a few other advantages over their feathered cousins, in warm climates chickens in commercial establishments overheat, meaning expensive coolers have to be used to keep them cool, with no feathers the chicken keep cool, saving huge amounts of energy to run the chillers, 

Israeli geneticist and poultry breeding expert Avigdor Cahaner is the man who created this featherless breed, although some claim that he resorted to some unnatural and unethical genetic modifications, Cahaner has repeatedly clarified that he only did it by selectively crossing a breed with a naturally bare neck with a regular broiler chicken. “This is not a genetically modified chicken, but a natural chicken whose characteristics date back over 50 years,” the Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor said,

created in the early 2000s, Avigdor Cahaner’s naked chickens got a lot of attention both for their unusual appearance and the touted benefits of the breed, which included, lower feed consumption and faster growth rate, but it is not all good news, the lack of feathers makes them more susceptible to parasites, mosquito attacks, skin diseases, and when kept outside sunburns and temperature variations, and for a number of reasons the naked birds have never really caught on, a study by Agriallis Magazine has concluded that the acceptance rate of featherless chickens by consumers “will not be successful due to fact of fear of hormonal usage, unusual animals, fear on health impact”, but I wonder how the consumer would know if it was a bald chicken, when it was slapped on their plate or popped into a bun?


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