Updated with Very Graphic Pictures! - Blackhead Five Miles from My Place

casportpony

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Jun 24, 2012
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The Golden State
Note: This is not my bird, it's one I sold two months ago and it was one that was raised indoors and off the ground, it was healthy and parasite/protozoa free when it left here.

Got a call yesterday from someone that I sold two young peacocks to two months ago saying that both were looking sick a few days ago. I told him I would come get the dead one and the one still alive and try to save it, but it died four hours after I brought it home.

Symptoms:
  • Depressed
  • Dropped wings
  • Not eating
  • Weak
  • Thin
  • Yellow liquid poop
  • Dark green cecal poop with blood

Here he is looking very stoic three hours before he died. You can't tell from the picture, but he's about 1kg (2.2 pounds) underweight.


Here is a poop picture, but it looked much more yellow than it does here.

1000


Here are the necropsy pictures from one of the peacocks.



Liver and cecal pouches


Contents of cecal pouch - black liquid poop, NOT normal!


Inside of cecal pouch




Liver with the blackhead spots and I think the black edges are necrotic

LL


-Kathy
 
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Thank you for the update and info.
Everyone tells me I should not have turkeys where I have anything else feathered but blackhead is not as common in our area either.
I think this can happen anywhere and it is best to keep an eye out for symptoms and stay ahead of it, if possible.
 
If you can raise peachicks on the ground with chickens you can raise poults with them, IMO. FWIW, I think there might be a seasonal component to blackhead, this being the time of year that I have seen it the most.

-Kathy
 
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I don't think there is any way to tell if an area is safe unless necropsies are done on all dead chickens, turkeys and gamebirds in that, city/county/state. I've been meaning to call the lab at UC Davis to ask them for the number of blackhead cases that they've seen, but I keep forgetting, lol.

-Kathy
 
Curiously, how many people here do necropsies on all of their peafowl? These were the first that I did myself, UC Davis did all of the others.

-Kathy
 

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