SteveWin
Chirping
- Apr 11, 2018
- 64
- 259
- 96
I have a 2 week old Blue Ameraucana chick with the same foot issue. Her "thumbs" - the toes which should point toward the rear and grip the back side of roost bars and branches - are rotated around toward the front.
After some research, I learned that this condition is called "duck foot", and it is a disqualifying condition in show birds. It's reportedly highly inheritable, suggesting a genetic basis... though foot problems can also be caused by incubation issues like temperature or humidity levels being slightly off, and things like niacin deficiency in the mother hen's feed.
I bought 6 straight run chicks, hoping to obtain 3 breeding pairs to begin a clan mating rotation system. But now, first, I'll breed this chick to all compatible chicks to test my theory that this one has two copies of a recessive "df" gene - if 50% of its hatchlings with another chick present duckfoot, I'll interpret that as the mate having supplied one df gene to its offspring, and I'll exclude that parent from the breeding flock. If a pairing to this chick produces zero df offspring, I'll call it "clean". If this chick produces an opposite sex offspring with df, I'll grow out that chick and use it to test the chicks that I couldn't mate to this one.
At some point, I'll also breed a df hen to a df cock, to test the possibility that one copy of a df gene produces duckfoot, and to try to determine the effect of two copies of the df gene. (Just in case this is like the Araucana ear tuft gene, where one copy makes ear tufts, and two copies is fatal to the chick. If duckfoot is caused by having one copy of the df gene, then breeding two df chickens together should produce 25% without df, 50% with df, and 25% unknown effect. BUT.. if duckfoot is caused by having just one df gene, then this chick has the only df gene in my flock... in that case, duckfoot would be really easy to breed out (just cull all df chicks), and it wouldn't be the lingering, persistent issue it seems to be with so many breeds.)
Anyway, the point is that not much is known about duckfoot genetics. Since I have a duckfoot chick, I can't use it as a breeder, but I can use it to test my breeder candidates and maybe learn more about df genetics. And I'll be having many duckfoot dinners over the next year...
https://afs.ca.uky.edu/poultry/glossary-poultry-terms#d
http://www.malaysianseramabantams.com/selectingyourstock.htm
http://mysrf.org/pdf/pdf_poultry/p10.pdf (see fig.9)
https://books.google.com/books?id=a...v=onepage&q=poultry judging duck-foot&f=false
After some research, I learned that this condition is called "duck foot", and it is a disqualifying condition in show birds. It's reportedly highly inheritable, suggesting a genetic basis... though foot problems can also be caused by incubation issues like temperature or humidity levels being slightly off, and things like niacin deficiency in the mother hen's feed.
I bought 6 straight run chicks, hoping to obtain 3 breeding pairs to begin a clan mating rotation system. But now, first, I'll breed this chick to all compatible chicks to test my theory that this one has two copies of a recessive "df" gene - if 50% of its hatchlings with another chick present duckfoot, I'll interpret that as the mate having supplied one df gene to its offspring, and I'll exclude that parent from the breeding flock. If a pairing to this chick produces zero df offspring, I'll call it "clean". If this chick produces an opposite sex offspring with df, I'll grow out that chick and use it to test the chicks that I couldn't mate to this one.
At some point, I'll also breed a df hen to a df cock, to test the possibility that one copy of a df gene produces duckfoot, and to try to determine the effect of two copies of the df gene. (Just in case this is like the Araucana ear tuft gene, where one copy makes ear tufts, and two copies is fatal to the chick. If duckfoot is caused by having one copy of the df gene, then breeding two df chickens together should produce 25% without df, 50% with df, and 25% unknown effect. BUT.. if duckfoot is caused by having just one df gene, then this chick has the only df gene in my flock... in that case, duckfoot would be really easy to breed out (just cull all df chicks), and it wouldn't be the lingering, persistent issue it seems to be with so many breeds.)
Anyway, the point is that not much is known about duckfoot genetics. Since I have a duckfoot chick, I can't use it as a breeder, but I can use it to test my breeder candidates and maybe learn more about df genetics. And I'll be having many duckfoot dinners over the next year...
https://afs.ca.uky.edu/poultry/glossary-poultry-terms#d
http://www.malaysianseramabantams.com/selectingyourstock.htm
http://mysrf.org/pdf/pdf_poultry/p10.pdf (see fig.9)
https://books.google.com/books?id=a...v=onepage&q=poultry judging duck-foot&f=false
