ginger mickey mouse chicks

Well I've finally broken my poor hatch record. I managed to hatch 15 (out of 24) beautifully coloured chicks. Unfortunately one has to be culled because of deformity (bad beak and no eyelids). 2 failed to hatch properly and the rest were infertile. The colours I thought were quite interesting with little mickey mouse face masks.

mmmmmm....interesting thats the colours my cinnammons started out

Cute baby pics well done Andoy

AWWWW Very Cute:gj:

Great colours Andoy - where did you get the eggs from?

Thanks guys. They are very sweet and quite healty (aside from the deformed one).

hi Harrie, I bought them on eBay from "bathrooms67"

Actually, Derek suggested them to me because he said he hatched some of the darkest range colours he had ever seen. They were quite cheap at £3.99 for 2 dozen +£3.75 post. So I thought I'd have a go.

Once they start laying, I'll offer eggs up to forum members for fertility checks.

they are lovely andy well done old boy lololol

Some more pics of my new chicks.

One dark baby


one light baby (unfortunately his feet look slightly deformed)


lightly mottled


light mustard shade


half of them seem to be this mid-rusty colour


and the rest (about a quarter) are a sort of choc/ginger

Gorgeous

Very Nice!

Nice. Andy you"ll have to sort me some eggs from the RUSTY ones in the future. dave.

Thought I'd add an update for the progress of these chicks. They are just over a week old (10 days old to be exact) and going thru a scruffy stage as teenagers do.

Derek, do these look anything like your Cinnamon chicks?

oh yes, in case anyone is interested. The guy has more eggs for sale on eBay...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270238848169

Hey, how'd the one with the bad leg go? Did it improve?

afraid not. He is still alive, quite healthy and very mobile otherwise, but I think it's a congenital defect. His legs and toes are twisted in all sorts of funy directions. So I won't be using him (or her) for breeding.

Can I see a picture(just to be annoying and nosey)? one of my chicks had a wonky foot but it corrected itself within a week, i had non-slip material in the incubator to try to avoid it aswell! Do the others pick on him?

I second the request for a piccie - i'd be curious to see if its like the bad legs a couple of my birds developed. I've now seen the same thing in a few people's chicks and i'm trying to find the matching clues in each case that might explain it.

It's not an inturned toe or anything like that, but looks more like his whole legs need to be broken and reset in a splint to straighten it. He can't stand up properly. He is too tiny for anything like that and I'd probably end up killing him by trying to correct it.

He seems to be alright with the others so far, if a bit hunched over. I'll take a pic for you in the morning.

Hi Andy,

The one's in your photo will turn out a reddish/brown range type. They are not the so called "cinnamon" of the 90's. When these "cinnamons" hatch, they have the normal pattern, brown instead of black.

You will notice with these birds, their feathers seem to stay very scruffy for a lot longer than any other. They remind me of the feather duster budgies some times.

Mine are a few weeks older than yours and are just about to go into the moult, it'll be intresting to see how their feathers are then

Derek.

Two batches of my quail had some with leg problems seeming to start from above the knee joint causing it to stick out. These were raised on A&P. I have since switched to a different chick crumb and my last two batches have been okay. I wonder if it would worth emailing A&P.

I too would be interested in a piccy Andoy to see if it looks the same as mine.

Been a bit busy today, but managed to get a pic of the poor chick with a deformed leg.



It doesn't really show up very well on here, but it seems to be almost arthritic. The leg seems to twist around away from the chick's body and the inturned toes seem to compensate for this dislocation. He doesn't seem to have any movement in any of the toes on that leg and just above it (the equivalent of the wrist). I tried applying a very gentle pressure and absoloutely no movement. So the whole leg is basically a peg leg as far as he is concerned. The other leg looks sort of normal, but not 100% sure it is as it doesn't seem to have full range of motion.

I might try to tape the toes apart and see if that helps him a little, but I'm a bit worried if I do that he may not be able to stand at all.

What you describe does seem to be what happened to mine. The one with curled toes can use her leg fine, but the toes themselves do not move, and you have to squeeze them quite hard to make her flinch. The one with the really bad leg can't use the knee, but can flex her toes, which is a bit odd.

I think his knees (if you can call it that, the bit that bends backward, just above the wrist/ankle) are perfectly mobile on the deformed leg. He spends most of his time crouched down. Indeed when he was newly hatched he spent virtually all his time wriggling on the ground. I spead crumbs on the floor for him.

I put an old rag to give him lots of traction (to encourage the feet to
straighten out) and it seemed to have helped straighten the toes on the
other foot. He seems to be able to stand up now, but he doesn't do it very often.

The other one with both stiff knee joints, deformed beak and missing eye lids couldn't stand at all. I was surprised he actually managed to hatch. Culling him was a no brainer).

Hi Andy,

Yes this is (was) the same condition as one of mine. As I hatched quite a few out I never noticed this until the chicks were 4 weeks old. The one I had, had both it's feet like that. It can't of bothered it as it was feeding and drinking and getting around fine.It was a cull in my eyes though.

Just had another look at your photo and I think this chick is the same colour as the odd one I hatched out too. If you look at the new feathers coming through, you'll see they are brown. In all the other "golds" I've hatched, the feathers are black. If I'm right the feathers get a more greyish look to them instead of gold.
I'm waiting for my hen to fully moult out to see if there is a difference in colour.

Derek.

I probably would have culled it, but I had a bit of an ulterior motive to keep it alive. I wanted to see what colour it came out as. The only other chick that colour was the severlely deformed one. It looked a bit too light to be a "normal" golden colour.

Provided he is eating ok and in no obvious discomfort, I'll keep him but won't use him for breeding.

Most of the chicks seem to have a greyish sheen comming thru in their feathers as Derek described. The bad toes on the other chicks seem to have all corrected themselves

If it turns out to be a hen I could always take her to live with my Tesco Value damaged quail