CHICKENS COME FIRST -- AGAINPOULTRY PROCESSORS' FLOAT TAKES TOP PRIZE AT BUTTER & EGG DAYS PARADE FOR THE FOURTH TIME

For the fourth time in a decade, Petaluma's largest poultry business came

up a winner in the Butter & Egg Days Parade.

Petaluma Poultry Processors' float -- featuring a railroad engine, a hot

air balloon and a bunch of chickens -- won the coveted sweepstakes award

Saturday in the 20th anniversary parade.

Sponsors declared the Butter & Egg event a success, drawing a crowd of

about 30,000 to downtown for the 134-unit parade and a day full of related

events.

For Petaluma Poultry, the grand prize was a payoff for months of effort by

a group of about 20 employees.

''It was a lot of work,'' said Patricia Sigala, quality assurance

supervisor at the Petaluma plant and perennial float committee chairwoman.

Her group got an initial boost from a float building class offered by

Butter & Egg Days organizers. ''That gave us some tremendous ideas,'' Sigala

said.

Then came planning and shopping for materials, and in the week before the

parade a crash drive, working about five hours a day to assemble the float.

They fashioned a replica of Petaluma's old rail depot, sponge-painting the

plywood walls to give the building a stucco look.

An engine arriving at the station pulled a flatcar that carried a cracked

egg with a chicken in it. A hot air balloon made of papier mache held up a

wicker basket containing straw and a stuffed chicken.

As train songs played from the float, six Petaluma Poultry employees

wearing chicken costumes danced in the street.

Forming a skirt around the float trailer were 450 roses made of plastic

tablecloth in bright yellow, fuchsia and green.

If any business has a right to flaunt chickens, it would be Petaluma

Poultry, the sixth-largest agricultural enterprise in Sonoma County.

The 32-year-old company, best known for marketing ''Rocky the Range

Chicken,'' hatches about 9 million chicks a year at its Santa Rosa hatchery

and raises them on farms in Sonoma and Marin counties.

The free-range chicken are raised without antibiotics or animal by-product

feeds, and are processed in Petaluma and shipped primarily to health food

stores in the western United States.

In 1999, Petaluma Poultry became the first company in the nation to sell

chicken, nicknamed Rosie, with a U.S. Department of Agriculture certified

organic label.

The company's Butter & Egg Days achievements date back to 1993, when its

float placed third in parade judging. The following year, their float placed

first.

In 1998, the company float again won first place among commercial floats,

plus the judge's choice award, and was invited to join Santa Rosa's Rose

Parade, where it won third place.

On Saturday morning, the Poultry Processors team was up early, attaching

the plastic roses and balloons to the float at 8:30 a.m.

''We had a marvelous time,'' Sigala said. Total cost of the float was about

$2,500, she said.

As sweepstakes winner, Poultry Processors gets an automatic invitation to

the Rose Parade on May 19. The float committee is assessing that option,

Sigala said, including the question of how the float could be altered to fit

the theme of ''2001 . . . The Odyssey Begins.''

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 762-7297 or e-mail

gkovner@pressdemocrat.com.