Birth Defect Duckling

[Mrs. BJ Hensley Jr.]

Does anyone know what causes this? Baby was born a few hours ago. Im thinking maybe the patents were too closely related. Im told that while on vacation a couple weeks ago, we had 7 others (all incubated) who were born worse than this but none lived.

It's name is "Croc"

 

[HumbleHen207]

Could be anything from inbreeding to incubator temperature, but considering that all of them had similar issues i'd lean to an inbreeding problem.

 

[Mrs. BJ Hensley Jr.]

This is my second season with most of them. They all came from a hatchery but some are for sure related from last year's hatch. I guess I didn't realize that it only took one generation to cause mutations. I thought it would have to be an ongoing thing like with dogs.

 

[HumbleHen207]

I have some pretty inbred birds without a single issue, up to 3 or 4 generations inbred (from all the little banty birds that have started their own little population hatching hidden eggs...). There is a chance that they were from already related birds from the hatchery, causing them to be inbred several generations before you obtained your stock. Hatcheries dont pay as much attention to the gene quality of their stock either, so you may have wound up with a really bad gene pool.

 

[Mrs. BJ Hensley Jr.]

The baby suddenly got really weak and 12 hours later it died. Im guessing if it's outside was THAT mutated, than the insides probably had some kind of issue too.

The mom of the others, who hatched and survived, was pure runner and dad was pure blue topknot. I can tell by the way the rest turned out. Its possible that a different hen snuck an egg in but none of my males are related to my runners. The hens, ive had a year longer.

 

[HumbleHen207]

This is quite strange, you really shouldnt be having inbreeding problems with your birds. This is the only time I have ever seen anything like this. Maybe its just a freak thing, if you hatch anither batch and the same problems occure, thats where id begin to get concerned.