I just read about preen glands (Uropygial gland) and it occurred to me someone, somewhere must have collected some preen oil and attempted to turn it into a useful product or at least hustle it into a dubious profit.
But I do not quickly find any such reports. Can you provide me with a link?
I Don’t see how you’re so sure. Birds are generally small animals, so the gland may only produce enough oil for coating their feathers once a day, or less. That’s enough for a chemical analysis, but doesn’t have to be a quantity that’s huckster-able.
Geese are great big greasy domestic birds that have been around for centuries and people tinkering with waxes and fats for lubricants and poultices must have thought of preen oil. Where I grew up everyone had geese mostly for the down but a couple of times a year they were eaten. My grandmother taught me how to pluck and dress fowl for eating and I was shown that I was to remove the glands but I don’t recall what we did with them.
There is a US Poultry and Egg Association that has a Poultry Protein & Fat Council. I will try and figure out some way to contact them.
Perhaps the fact that people have done stranger things with other animal secretions? Civet musk and whale ambergris are used in perfumery. Neither of them are particularly abundant in nature, so I don’t think Arkcon’s objection is valid.
[ … ] developed a process that would extract Pure Natural Preen Oil with its casine waxes intact from the glands of water fowl.
Further study revealed the oil’s amazing properties. Natural materials such as feathers, fine fleece and hair were beautifully enhanced when impregnated with “Nature’s finest natural conditioner.”
The people at [ … ] ingenuity and time consuming research in an effort to take the quality of Cul de Canard and the natural fly tying materials to a new level of excellence.
All of [ … ] products are proudly processed with pure, natural preen oil. Natural preen oil processed materials possess resilience, sheen and a benign scent that can be translated into flies that are visually and functionally in a class of their own.