Meet my mutant chicken, George

Meet George. He and his friend Gracie both hatched on the same day, 6/28 (8 weeks ago) as you can see, George is a mutant. These two hatched on the same day and George must be 3 times bigger than Gracie who still looks like a little downy peep with no feathers. George is nearly fully feathered and at a similar stage and size as our chicks that are 6 weeks older. George and Gracie have eaten the exact same food and lived in the exact same environment. They were exactly the same when they came out of the egg but George started growing very quickly. I'm assuming he's a rooster?

The clutch of eggs they were hatched from was given to me as a gift from a friend and I don't know their origin. I'm thinking we have to assume that these two (the only two that hatched) are not from the same hen or even the same type of chicken. George's comb is not one I have seen around here before.

I just had to share this because it is so ridiculous looking! I'm a new chicken keeper and these were my first chickens to brood and hatch so it's very exciting to see them grow.

Photobombs by Tasha the turkey and Old Man the 12-week old.
And please excuse Gracie's purple manic panic, she was nibbled by an iguana so I doused her with some tinted antiseptic. It had a wider spray radius than I expected so I ended up spraying it over half of her body. She seems fine now, just very purple.







Comments and theories welcome!
IronEagle

Oh My! That is a funny looking chicken! Hope it grows some feathers soon!

I think it is Gracie that is the mutant rather than George! She/he is way behind on normal development.

caj1985 said:

I think it is Gracie that is the mutant rather than George! She/he is way behind on normal development.

Click to expand...

Caj1985,
Funny that it didn't occur to me that Gracie is the mutant. That is a possibility, though. She has no fully formed feathers, just a little feathering around her face. Everything else is still down. She must be a runt! It will be interesting to see if she stays small.

Thank for your comments!
IE

interesting. By 8 weeks chickens usually are pretty feathered out unlike Gracie's chick fluff. She reminds me of a completely featherless bird I saw a pic of recently. I suppose it is not related genetically considering the featherless chicken doesn't even have scales on the legs. Here is a link if you are curious about that: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/743394/chicken-mutt-club/1170

Maybe George is some kind fast developing breed like a Cornish cross breed, considering he is the size of your older chicks. Keep posting photos of them on this thread as they develop. I'm curious how they will turn out.

By the way, I really like your goose avatar photo.

scratch'n'peck said:

interesting. By 8 weeks chickens usually are pretty feathered out unlike Gracie's chick fluff. She reminds me of a completely featherless bird I saw a pic of recently. I suppose it is not related genetically considering the featherless chicken doesn't even have scales on the legs. Here is a link if you are curious about that: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/743394/chicken-mutt-club/1170

Maybe George is some kind fast developing breed like a Cornish cross breed, considering he is the size of your older chicks. Keep posting photos of them on this thread as they develop. I'm curious how they will turn out.

By the way, I really like your goose avatar photo.

Click to expand...

It seems that George may be a fast developer and Gracie a slow developer so this is a time in their development that it is most apparent (because of the full feathers and lack of feathers respectively) I'll keep updating as they grow. I'm pretty excited to see what happens, too!

I love the featherless bird, so amazing! Looks like that keeper also loves naked necks. I have two naked necks and I love them. They are so interesting.

Thanks for the compliments on my avatar. That's Gansy our guard goose. He's a real character and we're glad to have him around. He's a good guard to the chickens (maybe a little too good as he sounds the alarm for both threatening and non threatening things) but is not so good a guard for the house as we have not been able to figure out how he decides if he like someone (let's them pass) or doesn't like them (honks like crazy and aggressively charges) . He's not very consistent but we appreciate his effort anyway!

Thank you for your comment!
IE

How funny!! But they are cute!! Thanks for sharing.

How did the little featherless chick turn out?

enola said:

How did the little featherless chick turn out?

Click to expand...

Hi Enola,
I had been meaning to update this thread with how George and Gracie are doing. Especially because Gracie turned out so, well, weird. Everyone here was right, George was an early bloomer and Gracie a late bloomer. George was huge and fully feathered in only a few months but Gracie didn't fully feather for about 5 or 6 months. She started laying in January but isn't a daily layer. (many apologies for the blurry photos. I could not get these two to sit still enough to get a good pic. Finally my husband stepped in to hold them)

George is a monster, there is no other way to describe him. He's very tall and gangly and has a huge comb "crown". Here in Mexico they call it "cresta rosa" and it is rare enough to get a few oohs and ahhs. I get a lot of compliments on him and a couple of my neighbors have offered to take him off my hands if I no longer need him. He's a timid and quiet rooster and is second in command behind my bantam rooster. It's strange to see a banty rooster bully around this guy who looks like the Hodor of chickens. He has a very deep-throated crow and is super vocal making chickeny sounding grunts a lot during the day.





Gracie, on the other hand, is a very tiny hen. Not bantam tiny, but smaller than all of my other normal chickens. She is one odd looking bird! Most notable is her long face and very long neck where she has a section of feathers that grow straight out instead of laying down flat. She has a few feathers on her wings that point out instead of back and she has only one single brown tail feather. (only one!) The rest of her tail area just looks like a rump. Except underneath the rump looking area she has skinny curly feathers that hang down. None of her feathers are uniform and they don't all lay the same direction. She has an odd personality and a face that always looks mad. She is a bit of a bully, especially to young chicks. And Gracie cannot fly at all due to her odd wing feathers. Poor thing, she's quite a sight.





I wonder if Gracie has some sort of weird genetic mutation or something. She doesn't look normal. We are very careful not to set any of her eggs just in case. Any thoughts?

Thanks for asking about her!
IronEagle

In case you're still wondering about Gracie, it appears she is a partial 'frizzle', a bird expressing a feather gene mutation that causes the feathers to curl back instead of forward