A US biotechnology company has accused a Scottish firm of stealing its ideas on research into chickens.  The dispute involves efforts to genetically alter chickens for materials for medicines worth billions of dollars.

AviGenics, a company founded by University of Georgia geneticist Bob Ivarie in 1996, claims in the state lawsuit filed in March that Roslin Institute scientist Helen Sang "misappropriated" AviGenics' research.

Scientists at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, considered a world leader in the field of chicken research, made headlines when they created Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep.

Ms Sang served on AviGenics' scientific board for three years but left last year just before Roslin and a Florida company called Viragen announced plans to mass-produce genetically engineered chickens. Their eggs would contain substances that could be used as drugs against cancer and other diseases. Sang would supervise the process.  It was, however, the same idea that AviGenics had been working on while Sang was on their board, according to AviGenics lawyers. Sang, Viragen and Roslin are named as defendants in the lawsuit, filed in March.

Lawyers for AviGenics have asked Superior Court Judge Lawton Stephens to stop Roslin and Viragen from going ahead with their plans. Their lawsuit also asks for an eventual jury trial and unspecified monetary damages.

A chicken has been granted a stay of execution because she was born with four legs.

She hatched at a farm in Belgium with two extra legs, which are half the size of normal legs, hanging beside her tail.  Farmer Gery Beirnaert says he will keep her for a few more weeks "for sentimental reasons".

Snetje (the chicken) is now living in a small hatchery together with 20 other chickens which Mr Beirnaert is raising for his own consumption.

He said he once had a three-legged chicken but that the animal didn't live for long.

A grieving chicken has started impersonating a cockerel after its mate was killed by a fox.  Miss Millie, a rare Frizzled Polish variety, crows at dawn and struts around the farmyard like a proud male.

Her owner Judy Cook, from Winscombe, near Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, said Miss Millie took on the cockerel characteristics after her mate and all the other females in the yard were killed by a fox.
 

She said: "She's the only one now and she's acting just like a cockerel. "I have never seen anything like it. Hens don't crow, it's as simple as that. It's totally unheard of."

Mrs Cook believes the four-year-old chicken could be trying to take her mate's place.

Miss Millie, who has extravagant plumage on the lines of the Seasame Street character Big Bird, now thinks nothing of coming into the family home and playing with the dogs.

Mrs Cook said: "She's very confident - certainly one of a kind."