Published: 2013 September 27 07:38:00 (12711 Views)

Farm workers in South Africa were amazed to find a chick with three legs.

"When we bought the chicks we noticed nothing strange. A few days later we saw that one chick was walking in a funny way," said Sweetness Maqase.

She's the secretary of the Phiwokuhle Farmer's Co-operative in Zwelitsha outside King William's Town, Eastern Cape.

Phiwokuhle buys chicks, feeds them for six weeks and then sells the adult chickens to local residents.

Sweetness said the strange chick was part of a large batch her co-operative had bought from nearby Umtiza Farmers' Corporation.

As soon as they saw that it had three legs, they separated it from the other chicks to protect it.



"But after we put the chick into isolation, it jumped out of the box to join the others," she said.

"There's nothing abnormal about its behaviour."

Umtiza supervisor Ntombi Njobe was surprised to hear that they had sold a three-legged chick. She said she's never seen a three-legged chicken before.

Fort Hare University zoology and entomology honours student Banele Dosi said this is an unusual mutation found mainly among inbred chickens.

He said the mutation probably happened while the chick was developing inside its mother.

"A female chicken produces a number of eggs. The third leg could have been caused by the failure of the embryo to split," said Dosi.




Source - Dailysun

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