Necroscopy - what do you think?

[Lom]

We had a hen die fairly suddenly on us, unfortunately. We've had a few lately, in fact, though not all with similar symptoms or circumstance.

This one, a leghorn about four months old and always on the small side, we noticed was a bit yellow around the eye (the skin around the eye, not the iris), a somewhat pale comb, and last night was much less rambunctious than normal. She still ate and pooped, but didn't seem to have her usual gusto. We isolated her and this morning found her dead.

Doing a necroscopy showed a very enlarged liver and kidney. The liver was a bit on the pale side, though not extreme, but it did have some white spotting. It's tough to tell if this is fatty deposits or perhaps tumors. The texture is a bit firmer than the rest of the liver, but just a bit. Kinda like the fatty bits you find in sausage. Hence, not sure if it's fat, indicating maybe fatty liver (and the kidney) or something like Mareks (God forbid), or something else (the others we've lost we've thought might be botulism if not Mareks). Here are a few pictures (hidden in a spoiler block for the squeamish) of the organs whole or dissected, some with hands for scale. I'd be interested in any opinions, thanks.

Spoiler: necroscopy

small section of the liver, cut to show white:

tried to cut out a few of the white bits to feel the texture, as I said they're firmer than the rest of the liver but not what I imagine when I hear "tumor" (though I've never seen a tumor in real life before, so what do I know?):

 

[azygous]

Lymphoid leucosis has enlarged liver with lesions as its signature organ involvement, while Marek's virus has an inflamed sciatic nerve as it's signature. So, unless this is simply fatty liver, you may be looking at LL virus in your flock. I would strongly urge a lab necropsy with the next chicken that dies in your flock.

 

[Eggcessive]

Sorry for your loss, but glad that you opened her body and took pictures with the necropsy. I have read that lymphoid leukosis shows up around the age of 4 months and older. So LL would be a concern. @azygous is very knowledgeable about that. Yellow skin can sometimes be a sign of jaundice which is related to liver disease. What are you feeding your chickens? Are any overweight or getting a lot of treats?

 

[Lom]

We fed them a non-GMO feed for a while, now have a soy protein (but not soybean oil) free organic feed. They get some watermelon and cucumber but nothing to excess. If anything I'm worried they're underweight, especially this one, though they always have fermented feed available and spend all day free ranging so it's up to them to eat or not. The scraps and fermented food were a cause for worry of botulism before (had one that went all wobbly in the legs, another that ended up paralyzed in the legs and poor head control, another with wry neck turned and curled under her though her legs seemed fine), and of course Mareks is always a concern. The two previous ones looked fine inside, no tumors, nothing out of whack to our eyes, we did check the nerve even and it looked okay to our amateur eyes (didn't check sciatic nerve on this one, probably should have but the liver and kidney were so obviously problematic we just kinda stopped there).