Interesting, I have never heard of this before. I think one of my d'Anvers pullets had some type of harmful dwarfism in addition to the regular dwarfism found in bantams. She was smaller than the rest and weak and lethargic but showed no signs of communicable disease.
That’s awesome! Thanks I’m starting to wrap my head around it now! I am excited to breed them and hope it all works out! Genetics are so much fun!
I believe @speckledhen had that form of dwarfism in their flock of heritage Delawares and Barred Rocks. On her Atlas thread, she shared some photos of chicks that she hatched that had the gene if you are interested in seeing the effects. Unfortunately, none of the dwarfs that she hatched ended up living long, but that was the first time that I had read anything about dwarfism in chickens.
There are several types of dwarfism, just a smaller bird doesn't mean it's a dwarf. Mine had hereditary thyrogenous dwarfism, as it seems by the name, related to the thyroid. None live to sexual maturity, hence it is a semi-lethal gene. They have curved shortened parrot-like beaks and a Down Syndrome look to them, but they are not lethargic or weak. I have published an article on Thyrogenous Dwarfism on this platform if you're interested.
This is very interesting. Would love to know what breeds it's found in
Me too!
