Silkie with 4 toe?

Four toes is a recessive gene so the silkie you saw would have had to have parents who both had four toes in their back ground. Even if both parents had 5 toes if both had a four toed bird in the background they could throw some four toed chicks. Sometimes people breed a four toed bird to improve on other qualities but that leaves lots of recessive genes floating around for others to deal with.

 

I just bought a silkie roo the other day and i checked his foot and he had all 5 toes so i bought him, and then i got home and find he has 4 toes on the other foot is this normal? (It doesn't really matter i would have bought him anyway!)

 

Four toes on one foot and five on the other is not uncommon. You will find Silkies with webbed toes and sometimes with the makings of the 6th toe. I had one hatch recently with an extra toe nail. Not good but not all that uncommon.

 

I hatched a silkie last week who we thought only had three toes on one foot and four on the other. He is actually just missing one toe - the others were smaller than normal and curled under the fluff on his footsies. He walks on "L" shaped feet pretty well and we named him/her Weebles - (weebles wobble but they don't fall down)

And then just the other day I noticed my Showgirl roo has an extra toenail on one toe. It is fused to the other toenail so I don't think I noticed when his toes were super tiny and then he went through a don't touch me phase until recently...

 

I have 2 silkie chicks that have all their toes, but are missing a toenail. Is this unusual? Can it be passed on? I also have one with 4 toes on one foot. Very pretty bird. Probably why they bred its parents.

 

all of the above can be passed on. You can also get great birds from all of the above as parents. What you see is not always what you get.

 

Stuff happens.

Tim