Lacy, I am not a chicken expert, but based on my background in medicine, I would say that it looks like she may have had ovarian cancer. What happens with ovarian cancer in women is that it breaks the confines of the ovary and "seeds" the abdomen, meaning little tumors all through the abdominal cavity causing the organs to stick together, This also causes an accumulation of fluid inside the abdomen. This could have resulted in her being profoundly anemic and volume depleted because the fluid in her bloodstream was leaking into her abdomen. It is just a guess.This is the strangest bunch of organs I've ever seen. They were basically a solid mass. All the intestines seemed to be fused together and everything was covered in what I can only call lesions. They are not "dots" so lesions is the only other word that seems to fit. The intestinal walls were quite thickened and there was a small channel, perhaps 1/8" in diameter that was full of cecal poop. I didn't think to slice through the entire mass until today. These pictures were taken yesterday.
This hen did not bleed when I chopped her neck. She had a very small heart and almost no blood inside, as you can see. I did not wash any blood away. The heart is smaller than a single yolk as you can see in the picture.
When I first opened her up, there was a lot of liquid inside and as I poured it out, it seemed to keep on coming. A guess would be about 3 cups of yellow liquid.
She was not laying (obviously) as you can see there are some flattened yolk pieces and the yolks that were still whole had a ribbed texture to them (ribbed like a pumpkin).
I didn't feel it was safe to feed this bird to any of my animals even after cooking so I tossed the whole mess. If anyone has any ideas as to what happened here, I'd like to hear them.
Liver is a good color, as are the lungs.
Sac around the intestines. See how they clump together?
Heart at the very top... smaller than a yolk. This was a large bird. Yolks look like pumpkins.
I cannot explain this photo.
Notice the lesions and the clumped intestines.
The intestines.
The duodenum.
Underside of the duodenum.
The duodenum having been sliced through to expose the interior.
Lacy, I am not a chicken expert, but based on my background in medicine, I would say that it looks like she may have had ovarian cancer. What happens with ovarian cancer in women is that it breaks the confines of the ovary and "seeds" the abdomen, meaning little tumors all through the abdominal cavity causing the organs to stick together, This also causes an accumulation of fluid inside the abdomen. This could have resulted in her being profoundly anemic and volume depleted because the fluid in her bloodstream was leaking into her abdomen. It is just a guess.
Laying hens are the only other animal that spontaneously develop ovarian cancer. Here is a picture of a hen with metastatic ovarian cancer:
Looks pretty much the same as your hen.
Here are the stages of ovarian cancer in a hen:
Staging of ovarian cancer in laying hens
Stages Characteristic features
Stage I Growth limited to the ovary; very little or no ascites
Stage II Tumor extended or metastasized to the oviduct, moderate ascites
Stage III Tumor seeding metastasized to the pelvic organs; peritoneal and abdominal implants; gastrointestinal tract and superficial liver metastasis with profuse ascites.
Stage IV Tumor metastasized to distant organs including liver parenchyma and lung; multiple solid tumors in mother organs with profuse ascites.
My first thought when I saw the photos was ovarian cancer, so I did a search and found an article about a study looking at hens in order to correlate with ovarian cancer in women. That is where I found the pictures. There is a lot of technical info related to it, but some great pictures!
I would think not.
I decided against feeding it to anything. I didn't know what it was and so I started cooking her but this morning, after fretting about it all night, I decided against it and threw it all in the trash.
She wasn't laying nor eating regularly. Every couple days she would take a few bites but that was all. This went on for several weeks and I kept watching her. Finally took the time to do it and this is what I found.
