Backyard Poultry Forum

A question.

I purchased some Polish eggs at an auction (No idea on parent quality, closeness of breeding, nutrition, etc.), 11/12 fertile and all 11 hatched, however 3 that hatched had no eyes, just sunken partially closed over pockets where the eyes should have been. These 3 have been culled. (No I didn't take any pics and it is too late now to do so, as they are in the compost bin.).

Is this a "normal/common" thing with Polish?

There where two other breeds I had in the incubator, same seller, that had good fertility but garbage hatch rates (4/12, 3/11). Typically I would associate poor hatch rate with poor parent nutrition, would folks agree that this may also have contributed to the lack of eyes in the Polish? A lacking Vitamin or essential trace nutrient?

I will not be using these to breed, they were purchased as incubator fillers. Any females will be sold as backyard layers and males most likely eaten!

Ron

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"To the Core"

Bizarre. I'd say this is a genetic problem.

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Cheerio, Rach
Blue Swedish Ducks

Agree, never heard of this before or experienced it myself in polands. Can't bear thinking about it actually. How sad.

The fact you had 3 chicks with Anophthalmia from the one hatch makes me think there's either a genetic or nutritional problem with the parent birds. There can be toxicity causes, but it'd be less likely those cases would make it to hatch. Anophthalmia can be caused by conditions in the incubator, but unless it's a problem you have had occur with a similar rate (25% of your hatches), I can't imagine it's environmental on your side.

My guess is whoever bred them needs to work on their birds nutrition and inject some fresh genetics into their breeding plan. It's not Polish specific, but methinks it's this particular breeder specific.

Poor little things.
I think the breeder needs some feedback Ron.