missing toe- cant show?

[Megs]

hi all, i recently purchased some birds with the hopes of showing them next year, the person said they could be show quality, hard to tell when they are young etc, i got photos e-mailed. i could unfortunatly not view the actual birds prior to buying as i couldnt take them out in the meeting place for fear they would escape, i noticed when i got home one is missing half of one toe on one foot. needless to say i am quite displeased after spending a reasonable ammount of $$ on these young birds and finding that she did not tell me this, and the photos she sent showed a bird with all its toes, and were obviously NOT the actual birds (she did say they were an example of the birds, i guess they were the others which she kept).

my question is are they showable with a missing toe? i dont think so, and i am considering taking them back and demanding a refund as she neglected to mention this (in my quest for possible show birds no less! which she knew!) i am also thinking i could keep them and try to breed them next season hopeing they dont pass along the missing toe, but at their age i might not get any offspring in time to grow them out for next years shows.

i have been looking for this breed for 8 months now with no luck as NO one in my area has them, and the one attempt to order from a hatchery by a friend produced only dead in shipping chicks

then the hatchery was sold out (i know they probably wouldnt have been quality coming from a hatchery, but was the only option to get this breed)

 

[Mahonri]

Try and breed them soon and see what you get. You might get some real nice show quality out of the offspring... but it's always a crap shoot.

 

[becky3086]

I am not trying to be ugly but it appears to me that the fault was yours. If you had looked the birds over better before you bought them, you would have seen the missing toe. If you buy and don't look them over first(for whatever reason) you are taking the risk. I am sure you would get some show quality birds from your breeding but, I guess, then you would possibly be passing on the missing toe defect. I guess, if you aren't going to sell eggs or chicks from these birds and don't care what defect is passed on or how many you have to cull this would be alright.
I am by no means an expert. Just my thoughts.

 

[Megs]

i wanted to look them over, she would not let them out of the box due to the fact we were in a crowd at a fair and there was a chance they would escape being frightened. I had thought due to the fact she knew i was looking for show birds and she showed me photos of nice birds that i knew what i was getting. apparently all she cared about was charging a lot of $$ for imperfect birds.

i will probably attempt breeding, though they are only 4 months so i have to wait a while until the hen starts laying, i wouldnt cull any offspring with a missing toe, but i would never sell them as potential show quality birds because i am honest and care about my reputation, they would be sold as pet quality stock.

 

[muddyhorse]

What breed are they ? silkies often have missing toes, It is the first thing I check (after getting a half toe bird) was the chicken born without the toe, or is it from an injury. If it was injured it would not matter to future offspring.

 

[Megs]

hi, no not a silkie, i will have to ask the woman if she knows if it was born that way or injured, as she did not breed them she might not know (they were ordered, not sure at what age).

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Is the entire toe missing, or just part of it, as it sounds like from your original sentence? If the bird has an incorrect number of toes it cannot be shown (9 instead of 10 or 8, for example), however if it lost part of a toe due to an accident, I do not believe it would be DQed. A missing toenail is points off, but not by much. Sometimes toes are extremely short.

However, if she was selling birds and would not let them be examined, I would say she knew she had something to hide. There would certainly have been some way of containing the birds so that you could look them over. I am going to assume chickens, although it could be pheasants or quail or pigeons or whatever, which might be more likely to try to escape, but it isn't that hard to contain a chicken as you remove it from a transportation cage--people do it all the time when taking birds to and from shows.

If the bird is entirely missing a toe, then it is genetic, and will or can show up to some degree in the offspring.

 

[rodriguezpoultry]

Interesting...

I would have demanded to see the birds or walked away. I don't care what breed they are, Leghorns included.

 

[dixiechick]

You can show the bird, first and foremost. The judge will most probably note it on the coop card. If, however, she looks better than the rest--even with her missing toe--you might even place.

I would enter her and see...some shows are different than others, so at least try. Talk to the judges and see what they have to say about her overall quality without the missing toe..that will give you input on how to breed..


The reason I dare say this is because I had a good friend whose best girl had her toes eaten off by predators and her bird was not turned away.

So---try and see...


Best of luck to you

 

[Megs]

it is almost half the toe that is gone, not the entire toe. next time i will make sure i get to look the bird over first or its no deal. i will give breeding them a go, maybe try the shows with her next year and see what comes of it. they are chickens, so i was a bit put off that she wouldnt take them out for me to see (not to hard to contain, only 2) but i assume she knows i wouldnt have wanted them had i seen, especially since we had been e-mailing about them for 2 weeks prior to my getting them! she had other birds i was interested in i would have taken instead had i know this one was missing part of the toe.

lesson learned

i have bought chicks from a hatchery before that were just missing the tip of the toe and toenail which were obviously bred that way, which was why i assume it would be a disqualifier (birth defect), but i guess it probably depends on the show/judge, i hope it is just points off.