Official Website of the California Poultry Federation

The first thing you notice about the chickens is that they look a little small for your typical leghorn. Then you see the feet: They're a steely blue, the color of an Air Force uniform or the Pacific Ocean in winter. These are poulet bleu, the blue-footed chickens of Stanislaus County, and they're the next best thing to the gold standard of chickendom, the famed poulet de Bresse of France. Without Modesto's Bob Shipley, they wouldn't exist. Shipley didn't breed these chickens - Canadian poultryman Pete Thiessen did. It took him 15 years. Avian flu wiped out Thiessen's flock in 2004, leaving Shipley with the last remaining 600 birds. Shipley is the head of the Squab Producers of California, a cooperative that is the largest processor of squab in the world. The co-op has a top-flight processing facility in Modesto, and ships squab all over the country to white-linen restaurants and the Asian market. But raising pigeons is a laborious and time-consuming business and increasing production takes time. That means their expensive processing plant was underused. The co-op solved that problem by processing other birds for the gourmet market: quail, chukars, unusual varieties of chickens, French baby poussin-style chickens - even pheasants. Sept. 16, 2008 Capital Press