Initial results are poor. I modded sheep to have shearable fat, and sheared one. It produced "Straw Ewe Fat" which could not be processed in the kitchen, did not show up under Glob in Z stock, and instead appeared under Body Parts. Fat has a special butcher return, but it seems that shearing doesn't count as butchering. Similarly, shearing muscle (meat) produces muscle instead of meat, even though butchering produces meat from muscle. Thus, it seems that wool is only wool because of the [YARN] token. Other resources must be innate, like skin or bone, which is directly used for leather and bolts, which processed materials like muscle, fat, and organs will only produce garbage material. At least, I seem to recall someone successfully sheared dwarf skin and made leather from it at one point, I may be wrong. Either way, it stands to reason that a stone tissue type will produce "Stray Coral Crab Granite" instead of "Granite Boulder".
That being said, you could easily make a reaction that takes "Stray Coral Crab Granite" and produces "Granite Boulder". Sadly I think you'd need one for every species of coral, because a generic "use material of reagent" will produce a "Coral Crab Boulder" instead of "Granite Boulder". Still, you should be very easily able to add a reaction for all these, and set it to automatic and use no skill. Thus, the player won't be searching through the list of red looking for the one crab type he has, and instead he simply shears the crab as normal and then another workshop will automatically process it into a boulder. Tanning leather and processing fat uses a similar automatic reaction. If you really wanted, you could append this to the smelter, but the smelter has enough functions on it with all the various metal types and alloys and "from bar/from ore". I'd highly suggest a unique workshop.