Those looked more like Fray, and were what led us to thinking that might be the issue with these birds. Fray is closely linked to the Lavender gene, I think that was the color of Ameraucana that they saw these in. As far as I know, nothing ever happened with those birds, I believe they were culled because of their feather defect (and Fray has a negative effect on hatchablity)
Since Jubaby was able to get silkied chicks from a Silkie/Ameraucana crossing - it means that the birds do have the hookless gene (which is not only in Silkies), and since they came out with all the other Silkie attributes like 5 toes, black skin, etc - it makes it less likely that it was a recent cross between the two varieties.