Silkies4everr
In the Brooder
- Sep 21, 2024
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Sorry this is a bit long.
I have a young silkie cockerel with a minor deformity. He has a finger on his wing, I'm aware chickens often have nails but he has a small finger like growth with feathers growing around it, almost like a separate joint. I first noticed it not long after he was moved to a larger pen with his hatchmates, I noticed the feathers hanging down and caught him to make sure it wasn't an injury.
Hard to pull the feathers back a little since he's a pretty fluffy silkie, but I pushed them away enough to sort of see the finger
tip. I noticed the feathers growing around it aren't super silkied and are more of wing feather or tail feather consistency.
Mostly wondering if it'll affect anything with breeding like if it's a genetic issue or something that just popped up while developing and if I should avoid breeding with him completely in case of it showing up in his offspring.
He did hatch out of a batch with numerous issues: Chick with split tendon, undersized chick with swollen waterey eye, chick with twisted neck and body, chick with cross beak. The cross beak is the only other deformed chick that lived. He didn't develop it until he was about two or three weeks old and I thought he had parrot beak at first.
I have a picture of him with the healthy chicks as a chick. He is the pale yellowey colored chick in the back right. And also a pic of the cross beak naked neck for reference or something I guess.
Either way I'll probably keep him as a pet since he's quite interesting and it's not affecting his health in any way.
Aside from all that does anyone know why all my yellowy wheaten colored chicks keep ending up as random non-wheaten colors... I had a wheaten chick (or so I thought) chick from my first batch and he turned out platinum with some red and golden, although the chick color could have been from the red. Most of my wheaten colored birds hatch out with chipmunk stripes like my silkie boy here, and then he feathered in... blue.
There's some more photos of him and the wing attached.
I have a young silkie cockerel with a minor deformity. He has a finger on his wing, I'm aware chickens often have nails but he has a small finger like growth with feathers growing around it, almost like a separate joint. I first noticed it not long after he was moved to a larger pen with his hatchmates, I noticed the feathers hanging down and caught him to make sure it wasn't an injury.
tip. I noticed the feathers growing around it aren't super silkied and are more of wing feather or tail feather consistency.
Mostly wondering if it'll affect anything with breeding like if it's a genetic issue or something that just popped up while developing and if I should avoid breeding with him completely in case of it showing up in his offspring.
He did hatch out of a batch with numerous issues: Chick with split tendon, undersized chick with swollen waterey eye, chick with twisted neck and body, chick with cross beak. The cross beak is the only other deformed chick that lived. He didn't develop it until he was about two or three weeks old and I thought he had parrot beak at first.
I have a picture of him with the healthy chicks as a chick. He is the pale yellowey colored chick in the back right. And also a pic of the cross beak naked neck for reference or something I guess.
Either way I'll probably keep him as a pet since he's quite interesting and it's not affecting his health in any way.
Aside from all that does anyone know why all my yellowy wheaten colored chicks keep ending up as random non-wheaten colors... I had a wheaten chick (or so I thought) chick from my first batch and he turned out platinum with some red and golden, although the chick color could have been from the red. Most of my wheaten colored birds hatch out with chipmunk stripes like my silkie boy here, and then he feathered in... blue.
There's some more photos of him and the wing attached.
