Wingless Chickens

[Black Feather]

Ok, this is a new one for me. Check this out!


Wingless chickens. I think it's genetic, but not 100% sure.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?q=chickens+source:life&imgurl=12d521a82ba15933

Anyone else ever heard of this?

Urban Coyote

 

[Ugly Cowboy]

Well, thats odd! Kinda neat though...

 

[Black Feather]

Yeah, I put this right up there with Mike the headless rooster and chickens with no feathers at all.

Urban Coyote

 

[Guitartists]

WHY!?!?!?!

eh, interesting... but WHY

edited to add.....

taken from something not related...

like wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them.

The story from Time

When Peter Baumann was a student at Iowa State College, he got to thinking about chicken wings. Nobody really cares too much about eating them, he decided, and besides, they tempt chickens to fly the coop. So why not get rid of them?
More Related

When Baumann became a salesman of veterinarian supplies, he made it his hobby to collect freak chicks from hatcheries. A few of them were wingless; others had stubby wings. For twelve years he bred together the more promising freaks. Last week he showed about 400 wingless birds. To a non-practiced eye, the live birds do not look much different from ordinary chickens, but in place of wings they have a scarcely noticeable depressed area. Their drumsticks are somewhat larger than those of winged chickens and their necks are a little longer.

Baumann, now 32, is not a scientific geneticist, and he does not quite know how he developed his wingless breed. It was part luck and part persistence, he thinks. At first only a few of the chicks he hatched in his small incubator turned out wingless. Year by year, the proportion rose. Today, 95% of his chicks are wingless.

A major difficulty at first was infertile eggs. As every barnyard observer knows, mating roosters need their wings for balance. Baumann's early wingless roosters were so unstable that often only some 10% of the eggs would hatch at all. Baumann sometimes used artificial insemination. Eventually nature solved the fertility problem. Some of the wingless roosters gradually learned a new technique of wingless balancing.

Baumann, who lives in Des Moines, is optimistic about the commercial value of his wingless fowl. "Wings on a chicken," he declares, "are obsolete. The airplane characteristics of the usual chicken are a nuisance." His wingless chickens do not have to be confined by high wire fences, because their ceiling is about two feet. They are nice and quiet too, and the roosters don't fight much. They "dress -out" beautifully, says Baumann, "with white meat where the wings are on other birds. These chickens are the nearest thing to a schmoo of anything alive."​

 

[ninny]

odd

 

[WestKnollAmy]

Obviously we like like our chicken wings since I do not believe this type of wingless chicken has ever caught on!
Might keep them from flying the coop but I bet their leg muscles are much better at bouncing them up to where they want to go.

 

[wegotchickens]

Poor babies. To never even be able to flap at a predator? How sad is that! My chickens seem to enjoy flapping, even if they can't get off the ground. And my banties LOVE to fly!!

 

[silkiechicken]

Probably didn't catch on in meat industry since during that time, they were perfecting what we now know as our cornish x... and looks like he made wingless leghorns. LOL Maybe had he bred into wingless rocks first there may have been success. Genetic mutations leading to loss of limbs usually has other consequences too. Back then, I bet it was a freak mutation he managed to breed out to others... which means the birds probably inherited other issues with a mutator phenotype.

 

[Mojo Chick'n]

But... but... I like wings !!!

Them's the best bits, IMO - nice and crispy with some sauce for dippin' mmmmmmmm


Now I'm hungry for grilled chicken wings.

meri

 

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

Hi! That's really interesting from a breeding standpoint. The 'why' kind of escapes me, but it was interesting to him so who am I to question it.

"These chickens are the nearest thing to a schmoo of anything alive."

Is a Schmoo some kind of wingless/flightless bird I've never heard of?

Lisa​