Feather loss with sores that look like puss pockets!

[JennieRD]

It appears so, it hard to say, After it healed up, he lost all feathering, I should have taken a pic but I didn't. Ill take a pic later today sometime. It may have to be surgically fixed. through the skin, I could see the knuckle of the last phalanges (tip of the wing) it appears either the skin has grown over the last two phalanges of the tip, binding the two together ( it folded under) and skin has grown over the two as one joint instead of two separate phalanges.

It may just make the wing appear to be shorter that it actually is. If I had lanced the pocket, I probably could have saved the deformity from happening, but I don't know if he could have withstood the pain, it was severely infected, and for such a young bird I cant believed he survived...a little TLC goes a long way.

I hope it is fixable it might also affect his flight ability, He needs to be able to fly where I live. Owl and hawks would have a field day with anything that cant fly, he was a show prospect....We will see....If not, he will be fine as a breeder

 

[chooks4life]

Well, at least you know for sure what it was now. And he survived.

What's the chances it's heritable? I've never had any ingrown feathers in my chooks, sounds quite unusual to me. But, that is of course just a thought.

Best wishes.

 

[JennieRD]

Well, at least you know for sure what it was now. And he survived.

What's the chances it's heritable? I've never had any ingrown feathers in my chooks, sounds quite unusual to me. But, that is of course just a thought.

Best wishes.

I have a 50/50 Chance of it being a birth defect...Ill breed him 3 times with 6 different hens...If it shows up again in any of his offspring, Ill send him and all of his offspring to frezzer camp. Its the only fair thing to do. I would not want to pass this on to any offspring whatsoever to me that would be a very cruel act.

 

[chooks4life]

I have a 50/50 Chance of it being a birth defect...Ill breed him 3 times with 6 different hens...If it shows up again in any of his offspring, Ill send him and all of his offspring to frezzer camp. Its the only fair thing to do. I would not want to pass this on to any offspring whatsoever to me that would be a very cruel act.

Sounds reasonable, but if he were mine, I'd inbreed him back to his own offspring to be doubly sure. Otherwise you might cross him out, find no problems, then mix his bloodline with perhaps irreplaceable bloodlines of other chickens, only to find years down the track that is was indeed heritable and possibly even more severe than it first appeared.

Many genetic problems in chooks I had did not emerge in outcrosses, nor in crosses to not closely related relatives; I ended up as a rule inbreeding them to their own offspring to see what they carried after I found nothing else made it show reliably. Of course, that was after I found out the hard way what sort of genetics some of them were carrying.

Best wishes.

 

[JennieRD]

Never looked at it that way, but you make a lot of sense. I guess I have always been so set in my ways to avoid inbreeding and line breeding at all cost as well as looking at breeding out any issue. I like the way you think, double the defective gene, force the defect out if there is one and end it quicker. Smart, very smart thinking...Thank you!

 

[JennieRD]

This might seem like a dumb question, is chook short for chick, chicken, or poultry? I've seen it several times on this site, just curious. Where I live, a lot of our terms are a mix of Cajun French (Nothing like real French) a mix of languages (French, Spanish, English, American Indian, a mix of African tribal languages, German, and Russian) combined over many, many years to create a very distinct language. Until just recently, on this site, I have never seen nor heard the term before. I have to remind myself on this site to speak and type proper English, or there would not be too many who could or would understand what I am saying or referring to.

 

[chooks4life]

Ah, thanks, but I can't take credit; I'm certainly not the first to resort to this method to weed out bad genes.

Like you, I was very set against inbreeding, but it's really become indispensable to my flock's genetic health, to do these inbreeding test matings. I regularly bring in new blood, so it's a fixture of my breeding practices now. As you say, freezer camp for the rejects!

Originally, I thought surely just using good looking, healthy birds of unrelated lines for breeding, without testing first, would be fine because, well, they tick all the boxes we're told to check; they were unrelated, no obvious defects; and I was using such diverse genepools, even using chooks from different regions... Nevertheless, even unrelated genes can combine in detrimental ways; there were problems almost from the get-go and these problems weren't restricted to either birds bought from backyard breeders, enthusiasts, commercial hatcheries, or from those who just neglect them and let them run completely wild. All sources had some bad genetics which they contributed more often than I would have thought they would, even in outcrossings.

In fact years later I'm still weeding some of the aftermath out of my flock. Thankfully, with inbreeding testing to spot the deleterious genetics, tidying up the mess happens almost as quickly as making it. Unfortunately I was years in the making of it, so I'm still tidying it up.

Australia has a lot of inbreeding problems anyway, though, our history of poultry imports has been dismal. Even using mongrels which should be very 'outbred' is still fraught with bad genetics and it doesn't help that some people don't realize inbreeding is bad, lol, I've had one lady tell me 'inbreeding doesn't matter with birds' --- she, among others I know, had been inbreeding nonstop for years.

Best wishes.

 

[chooks4life]

This might seem like a dumb question, is chook short for chick, chicken, or poultry? I've seen it several times on this site, just curious. Where I live, a lot of our terms are a mix of Cajun French (Nothing like real French) a mix of languages (French, Spanish, English, American Indian, a mix of African tribal languages, German, and Russian) combined over many, many years to create a very distinct language. Until just recently, on this site, I have never seen nor heard the term before. I have to remind myself on this site to speak and type proper English, or there would not be too many who could or would understand what I am saying or referring to.

Ah, lol, fair enough. 'Chooks' is just an Aussie slang term for 'chickens'. Just refers to the whole species, males included, not just hens or any specific breed or age group. It's also a common enough term in some other countries, but rather alien to others still.

Best wishes.

 

[JennieRD]

Its been bothering me for a while didn't know the proper response to the word...now I know! Thank you!

As for inbreeding, the US has its fair share. Greed has a lot to do with it. Some breed knowing they have issues, others breed not knowing what they have the issues, some just don't care. Like you, I've pulled my flocks from all over the U.S., East Coast, West Coast, North, South and Central areas. Anywhere from 1 to 5 birds from a breeder. A lot of my spare time is spent watching mine looking for anything and everything I do and do not want in my flocks. The hardest part for me is my cull pens, knowing it is for the best for the integrity of the breed. The cockerels if I catch it early enough I capon them and leave them with the flock as long as I can. So I really do not have a meat pen. My meat pen is full of birds I found not to beneficial to the breed. Many people are applaud of the thought, but they forget they, chose a specific breed for a reason, they would be very upset if there beloved backyard bird had something wrong with it. If it came from my birds, I would be the first they blamed. But then I am cruel in their eyes for weeding out those with problems. I find it much more cruel and reckless to purposefully bring a living breathing animal into this world having full knowledge it will live a life of suffering because of my greed and lack of consideration. Nature normally weeds out the weak, man has intervened and decided who will live and who will not. Many times they should let nature take its course in extreme cases.

I like your philosophy, wish there were more like you out there, they are far and few between.

 

[chooks4life]

Its been bothering me for a while didn't know the proper response to the word...now I know! Thank you!

As for inbreeding, the US has its fair share. Greed has a lot to do with it. Some breed knowing they have issues, others breed not knowing what they have the issues, some just don't care.

That's true, it's common enough in all countries. I wish there was better genetic legacy information available, to concisely put into perspective the generational effects of the choices we make in what birds we cull or breed. Obviously a very difficult subject to simplify or even quantify though, and the burden/lure of economic factors would still turn many away from it even if they knew it was a dead-end genetic line they're propagating.

Like you, I've pulled my flocks from all over the U.S., East Coast, West Coast, North, South and Central areas. Anywhere from 1 to 5 birds from a breeder. A lot of my spare time is spent watching mine looking for anything and everything I do and do not want in my flocks. The hardest part for me is my cull pens, knowing it is for the best for the integrity of the breed. The cockerels if I catch it early enough I capon them and leave them with the flock as long as I can. So I really do not have a meat pen. My meat pen is full of birds I found not to beneficial to the breed.

I found separate meat pens not ideal, too. I haven't done caponizing, since meat tenderness is very heritable and I've got some decent dual-purpose genetics in my mongrels; plus, I've always liked meat with a bit of firmness to it, even chewy, though I've bred into softer fleshed lines for my family's sake since they don't much like chewy meat.

I leave my 'cull' birds in with the main flock, or separate them into another flock where they still remain free range, because the quality life they can have is something that benefits us in turn, when we eat them, or their eggs. You can taste poor quality of life in animals, they just don't taste the same as animals that were able to enjoy their daily life.

Many people are applaud of the thought, but they forget they, chose a specific breed for a reason, they would be very upset if there beloved backyard bird had something wrong with it. If it came from my birds, I would be the first they blamed. But then I am cruel in their eyes for weeding out those with problems.

Ah yes, everyone's judgmental about it until they have that special needs chook on their hands and no way to stave off its inevitable death... Then they appreciate the importance of the culling. In the meanwhile they can be quite verbally cruel and short sighted.

I too was a bit chary of culling very strictly, in my own birds anyway --- I wasn't verbally attacking anyone else over it --- until of course the inevitable happened, and I had defects and doomed animals (Leukosis and genetic spraddling) and all of a sudden I found it easy to cull certain animals I'd been too lenient to cull before. I haven't culled chicks, but I've noted them at hatching as being on the list to cull. I make sure they have a good life first, it's the least I owe them, in a way.

I find it much more cruel and reckless to purposefully bring a living breathing animal into this world having full knowledge it will live a life of suffering because of my greed and lack of consideration. Nature normally weeds out the weak, man has intervened and decided who will live and who will not. Many times they should let nature take its course in extreme cases.

I agree completely.

I like your philosophy, wish there were more like you out there, they are far and few between.

Thanks, I'm trying to be a responsible and wise poultry keeper, often easier said than done when faced with the sheer abundance of often conflicting information out there. By some people's standards I'm irresponsible, but each to their own, we each do what we believe is right and that's about all we can do.

Best wishes.