Ok Short intruduction. I'm Swedish an have had NN for many years, both bantams and regular. Last year I got hatchingeggs from Hungarian NN. I have a friend from Hungary living in Sweden and he imported the parentstock. In Hungary these breed is considered as an old heritage breed and is preserved in a program by one of the large agriculture schools.
I hatched 25 chickens last year sold some when they were about 5 weeks and kept 2 roosters and 5 hens for breeding. One of the roosters died this winter so I only have one rooster in the breedingpen. Here is a pic of my birds
I hatched some eggs in february to check fertility an hatchability and sold the chickens. Then I started to sell hatching eggs. 2 weeks ago one of my bayers contacted me and said the wings on the chickens looked strange. It was as they couldn't stretch the last joint... She asked if this was normal for NN.
I replyed to her that I had never seen this, but on the other hand I hadn't checked the wings on the chickens I hatched in February. The breedingbirds have totally normal wings and so has the other NN breeds. (I have bantam and a French NN too). I have not heard from any other bayer and therefore we thought this was a result of the post handling of the hatchingeggs.
Three days ago I hatched hungarian NN again. All of them has deformed wings
Does anybody have a clue what this could bee??
Her is first a picture of a normal wing from an other breed
And then a picture of the NN with deformed wings
Besides the wings the chickens are totally normal. They eat and drink, move and act just like chickens do. My own chickens are only 3 days old but the chickens hatched from eggs I sold are 3 weeks and also developing totally normal besides the wing defect. As the chickens seems totally well beside the wings I will keep them and see how they develop. As they don't seem to be in any pain they are not more handicapped than any other bird that can't fly.
Some more facts:
-I have 18 different breeds. No other breed have had this deformation of their wings.
- All breeds have the same food. High quality food for laying hens. This is a well known brand with good reputation in Sweden.
- The parents to my breeding group has normal wings (and so has my breedingbirds).
- My friend who gave me the hatching eggs last year have never seen the defect on his chickens. Not last year and not this year.
- I hatched 6 other breeds at the same time. All normal. Totally normal hatch results too.
-I have a very good incubator (BrinseaOvaEasy 380) and it has a alarm function telling you if there is anything wrong during incubation. No alarm was set of while these eggs were in the incubator.
I'm a quite experienced breeder with good knowledge of chicken genetics. But I don't knew of any genetics giving this defect?!? I have never seen it before and I have been breeding chickens for 15 years... I feel a little lost and don't really knew how to handle this. Naturally I will not sell any more hatching eggs of this birds until I have a clue what is going on. So pleas if you have any valuable input let me knew.
