Severely crooked toes

Zorse

Hatching
Apr 13, 2024
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I’ve got 25 6-week-olds and about half of them have severely curled toes. I haven’t seen this previously with our incubated eggs. Reading online brings up so many possibilities of what went wrong so I wonder if anyone here can help narrow down the culprit?

My flock consists of a Marans rooster and a Limousin and about 20 hens mostly Marans and Limousin but a few random breeds as well. We incubated only the brown Marans eggs. Of course given that we have a Limousin rooster as well the resulting chicks are not necessarily pure. The flock eats our home-grow wheat and barley (no commercial feed) and go outside in a huge orchard run.

Incubator was in our kitchen. Once hatched, the chicks went to a box in the corner of the kitchen. Kitchen is heated by wood but the floor is tile so it’s possible the floor was cold. Bottom of the box had a piece of metal siding cut from our camper van roof. Stayed in the box for the first few days and then went outside into a stall with straw floor. Chicks ate commercial crumble for first three weeks and then moved to the second age pellet and also get our wheat.

How can I know if it was due to our management or if it’s a hereditary thing? And then due to our rooster or perhaps just one hen? Marans rooster is aggressive anyway so I wouldn’t mind seeing him gone ;) Rooster himself doesn’t have crooked toes but could it be in genes?

Last year’s chicks did not have this issue. But this year we have some of the hens who hatched last year. I think the rooster is different - we had a bunch of the roosters from last year’s crop living with the flock until they got sold off and I think we accidentally sold our former rooster and kept a young one.

I’ve included a photo of one of them. It’s quite severe but they seem to be walking and scratching like normal.
 

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Hello! I have two hens that have toes like this. I bought them from a farmer. I don't think it's anything you did. Mine are fine. I just keep an eye on them if I see the limping.
 
This is a Rhode Island Red about 2 months old. I seem to remember 'helping' it out of its shell. I thought that might have had something to do with it. It seems fine. Walks a little funny, but doesn't seem to complain much about it.
 
A lot of time this happens when it's an assisted hatch, and if caught right away, 100% reversible. It also could be a vitamin deficiency so giving them a Vit E pill and scrambled eggs, and about 1/4 of a human's B-complex vitamin can help.

We've had a couple with air cells on their sides we've had to help out and they sometimes got splayed legs or curled toes. Splayed legs is about 3 days to fix. Curled toes is about one day to fix.

Here's how to fix the feet. We used a piece of cardboard and taped their toes to that.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...s-with-tape-picture-tutorial-and-video.75247/
 

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