An Oddity in the Barnyard

Besides me!  This afternoon, I was looking over the young pullets and cockerels in the small chicken tractor.  I call this tractor the day care center because it's the tractor that we move the chicks to as soon as we remove them from the brooder - usually at about four weeks, but if the weather is right, a little earlier.  I like to get the birds out on grass quickly.

I'm going to move the birds out of the day care center chicken tractor and into a larger chicken tractor and they'll stay there until the pullets lay their first eggs. Then I open the gate and they free range on the pasture and come back at night to roost on the roosting bars in the tractor.  The roosters, well, they will be butchered and put in the freezer and will be eaten.  Poor ol' fellas.

As I was looking at the birds, something caught my eye.  Something strange. Actually, it was this bird.  She's got pretty coloration and you can see the feathered ear tufts and beard of the Araucana breed.

Araucana?

All of the chickens in the day care tractor are from eggs that we gathered from our hens and put in the incubator. We have Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, Black Stars, and Araucanas running around with roosters from all breeds except the Black Stars.  So that means a lot of these birds will be cross-breed chickens.

So back to the oddity.  Look at the bird's feet!  Five toes on each foot!  Most chickens have four toes, but this one has five!  See how weird that looks?  Is it a deformity?  What is going on?

Five toed chicken!

I surmised that maybe crossing the chickens caused this, but I researched and found that there are only a few breeds that have five toes:  Dorkings, Faverolle, Houden, Sultan, and non-bearded Silkie Bantams.  When I search pictures of those birds, she looks kind of like a Salmon Faverolle, but it really is a mystery to me.  I don't know how we would have any of the five toed breeds I listed above. 

She walks just fine on her five toes, so there doesn't seem to be a problem.  In fact, she might have a competitive advantage over the rest of the flock in scratching and finding bugs, worms, and seeds with five toes instead of four.