Deformities or Injuries?

[jonh684]

Hi everybody. I have 17 chicks that are 5-6 weeks old. Today, while moving them to a much larger brooder until the weather warms up a little, that several of them have curled, scrunched, or otherwise abnormal toes. We hatched the chicks ourselves, but got the eggs from a hatchery. The interesting thing is, of the 3 or 4 chicks that have the issue, they are all roos (9 roos 8 pullets in the hatch). Is there any way to tell if this is a development deformity, or injury after hatching?

For the record, there are 7 BR (4 roos, 3 pullets), 6 RIR (3 roos 3 pullets), 4 BO (1 roo 3 pullets). Two RIR and 1 or 2 BR roos have bad toes.

We plan on keeping the strongest roo from each breed for flock protection/breeding, and butchering the rest of the roos at 18 weeks, so if we can determine it is developmental, we probably won't be keeping those individuals for breeding.

I read about the cardboard boots to correct the issue, but again, if we're butchering them instead of raising to adulthood, it may not be worth the effort.

Thanks for the help and advice.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

It would be too late to correct at this point anyway, so the boots really aren't even an option. Do they all share a parent?

ETA just reread they were from a hatchery so there's probably no way to know. I would say it was a developmental/incubation problem, unless you had them on wire this whole time then that may be an issue (I don't know for sure).

 

[lazy gardener]

Could be a feed quality issue, but most likely related to hatching issues or poor nutrition/genetics with breeding stock (IMO).

 

[jonh684]

Thanks for the input. We had them on pine shavings in their box, so I was more concerned about injury from peers (indiscriminant piling on each other, etc.) but they all seem to be coping very well. Only one of them is being considered for breeding duty due to his dominant personality and comparatively fast growth rate, but we'll definitely have to weigh his curled toes in when we make the final decision. Thanks again.