Fat ball in abdomen

[Tawas Cluckers]

My hen had the typical penguin walk & distended abdomen of an egg-bound hen. After trying all the usual treatments for a week, I finally put her out of her misery. After doing an autopsy, she had giant hard fatty ball the size of a baseball in her abdomen, along with about 2 cups of loose fatty tissue which spilled out. Cutting the fat ball in half, it appeared to have what looked like an egg at the center, but no shell. Any ideas?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

What do you feed them (including treats) and how are they managed?

Sounds like the sort of internal fat build up you see before your birds suffer FLH and similar. Usually combination of diet too high in carbs/fat and lacking exercise.

Also, kudos for doing your own Necropsy. I don't suppose you grabbed pictures???

and if it does turn out to be feed related, don't kick yourself over it. There is a LOT of bad feed advice out there, there are some not great feeds out there, and w/o doing a necropsy as you did, most would never know the cause. The good news is that you can fix it going forward.

 

[Razzlefrazzle]

Hard to know without seeing pictures, but it sounds to me like a case of internal laying. Instead of going down the oviduct an egg winds up in the body cavity. The egg can cook from the body heat alone and look like a hard boiled egg. In your case it sounds like the egg might have started breeding an infection so the body tried to wall it off with pus (the hard fat). The "loose fat" that spilled out might be more egg material or fluid buildup from the infection/reproductive issue.

 

[coach723]

Depending on where in the abdomen the mass was, it could have been internal laying, or salpingitis. Link below on salpingitis has images you can compare with what you saw to see if it was lash material from salpingitis.
https://the-chicken-chick.com/salpingitis-lash-eggs-in-backyard/
The fatty abdomen is often diet related, and some birds are genetically more prone to having fat deposits build up. Some fat is normal, but too much can cause all sorts of health issues, including fatty liver disease and reproductive problems.