Silkie with 4 toe?

[Bleenstar]

I saw a silkie today, but it has 4 toes...it looks exactly like a silkie, even have that head puff thing. I thought 4 toe is a recessive gene?

 

[jimnjay]

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.

 

[chickNjake]

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!)

 

[Bleenstar]

thats so weird, its like a mutation of some sort..lol it mutated one toe! cuz with the gene stuff, it just doesnt make sense to me!!!

 

[jimnjay]

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.

 

[pbjmaker]

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...

 

[erin0415]

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.

 

[onthespot]

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.

 

[tadkerson]

Stuff happens.

Tim