I wonder if McMurray hatchery is overbreeding some of their birds

14 years ago

Or whoever they are buying their eggs from? I had gotten a bunch of chicks from them, and I had noticed that the one 'free' chick ( a silver polish) had seemed to be sort of unhealthy from day one. The bird seemed to always have its mouth sort of open. The beak seems to not fit right, the poor little thing can't close its beak all the way. No other birds have this problem. Then, I noticed that the male leghorn has a leg problem, the one leg sticks out and is cocked to the left. The bone itself looks like it got twisted at the hock somehow. This may be a leg injury that happened when it was little, not sure though. It didn't seem to have problems walking when it was little, or not that I noticed.

The other leghorns I got seem to be just fine, and so do the other birds that lived. Luckily the poor leghorn can walk, and perch on a roost, but I feel sorry for him. Figures he's the only male. :P

Comments (11)

fancifowl
14 years ago
Chicks are hatched in large numbers and these things just happen, they miss some chicks now and then which might have some problem. I doubt its from inbreeding but it can happen in random mass matings. The 1st signs of inbreeding depression is infertility and low egg numbers.
msjay2u
14 years ago
I wonder why all the local people here praise McMurrays so much and no one has had any problems that I talked to (consistently) but it seems that the folks on here have a lot of problems. That is so weird. Does MM have different hatcheries that they mail from or do all the chicks come from the same place? I wonder has anyone noticed if their chicks came from the same zip code as MM's?
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mersiepoo
Original Author
14 years ago
Not sure. It could just be like Fancifowl said. I haven't ordered from other hatcheries, so I can't compare my experiences. Most of their birds are healthy, I guess I just got a couple of bum birds. I was happy with all the other chicks I got from them, they are growing like crazy! :)

I plan to get some guinea keats from them next year, but I want to also get some muscovy ducks too, but I'll go to another hatchery for that, since MM doesn't sell them.
brendan_of_bonsai
14 years ago
No one, no matter how they breed their birds, can avoid all genetic problems. The simply missed one, it happens. If you are going to breed these birds you should avoid using this defective one, outside of that it will probably be of little consequence in the end.
bulldinkie
14 years ago
i bought chicks from them once there was one chick with 4 legs I wonder too.
mersiepoo
Original Author
14 years ago
Bulldinkie, You're kidding, right? LOL!
brendan_of_bonsai
14 years ago
Chicks with four legs happen fairly often.

Here is a link that might be useful: google images
msjay2u
14 years ago
4 legged chickens are as rare as hens' teeth. Most of those pictures are of the same chicken
brendan_of_bonsai
14 years ago
Fairly often being a relative term
mersiepoo
Original Author
14 years ago
Those are some cool pictures! I'd love to get some of them, I always was partial to drumsticks. :D
grullablue
14 years ago
hmmm... I guess I'm really thankful! We had an order of 30 in February from MM, it was a split order between three families, and all of the chicks are now beautiful pullets and doing well! I have 10 of them here.