CX Meat Birds coughing and wheezing? What's wrong/Can we still eat?!

[Anna-MN]

I have a group of CX meat birds that are supposed to be butchered on Saturday. Tuesday they started making weird sounds but I didn't think anything of it. I thought they were just getting their "big chicken clucks" and growing out of their cheeps. Now they are coughing and I lost two that started wheezing right before they died. There is no nasal or eye discharge and their poop is completely normal and so is their eating/drinking habits. Can I still eat them with this strange illness or should I not? They are averaging 8 pounds live weight and I cannot keep them any longer. The only thing I can think of is that their breast meat is constricting their airways.

 

[Kelsie2290]

http://www.millerhatcheries.com/Inf...nfo/Ascites (waterbelly)_in_Meat_Chickens.htm
Maybe heart failure? Pretty common in cornish Xs,

 

[Anna-MN]

If I butcher them tonight while they are still doing okay, can I still eat them and not worry? If it is heart failure, I don't see why the meat would be bad.

 

[Kelsie2290]

If that is what it is, they should be fine to eat. We usually have a couple in every older cornishX batch we wind up doing early because of it. If you have any that are showing signs, I would process them and look for the excess fluid to see if that is probably what they have.

 

[Anna-MN]

Yep they had the excess fluid. Butchered 20 tonight, will do 40 tomorrow and the last 40 on Saturday. Their lungs and all other organs looked extremely healthy.