Sudden death of seemingly healthy chicken...necropsy

[Possum-Pie]

I am a nurse practitioner so am familiar with surgery and autopsies. My Austrolorp died suddenly at some point in the night. I wanted to assure myself that it wasn't a spreadable disease so I figured that if I could find a "smoking gun" cause by cutting her open I wouldn't worry about the rest of the flock.
Heart/lungs looked without pathology. The first glaring thing was a section of the mid-colon was VERY distended. I then opened the gizzard and it was full of twisted grass blades to the point that there was no more room.
I feed crushed oyster shells and they have access to pebbles, but I could only find one pebble in her gizzard. Does anyone have an idea as to what may cause her not to eat enough rocks to break down the grass? She is 2 1/2 years old.

 

[Possum-Pie]

I am a nurse practitioner so am familiar with surgery and autopsies. My Austrolorp died suddenly at some point in the night. I wanted to assure myself that it wasn't a spreadable disease so I figured that if I could find a "smoking gun" cause by cutting her open I wouldn't worry about the rest of the flock.
Heart/lungs looked without pathology. The first glaring thing was a section of the mid-colon was VERY distended. I then opened the gizzard and it was full of twisted grass blades to the point that there was no more room.
I feed crushed oyster shells and they have access to pebbles, but I could only find one pebble in her gizzard. Does anyone have an idea as to what may cause her not to eat enough rocks to break down the grass? She is 2 1/2 years old.

Gee, I've always gotten a lot of great feedback and help from the forum, but nobody has replied to my post? I was hoping for some feedback, from someone else who had an idea. As I said, I am no vet but I gave it a try. The only strange thing that I saw was a crop full of long grass, a lack of grinding stones in it, and a 3cm length of colon that was very distended. 2 days later and the rest of the flock seem fine, so I'm hoping it wasn't a disease. a few mushrooms were found near their run (one with what looked like a peck mark in it) but it appeared to be a non-toxic variety according to the Research that I did.

 

[Folly's place]

Oyster shell is meant to dissolve and supply calcium, it's not going to substitute for actual stones in her gizzard. Pebbles of different sizes are the answer, but apparently she wasn't eating them. Confused bird? Do you know what a diseased chicken heart actually might look like? Sometimes things are really obvious, sometimes not. Not finding an apparent disaster is good, sometimes it takes a pathologist and histopath to actually figure it out.
I've sent necropsies to the lab occasionally, and had answers that were only seen by specialists.
A cluster of unexplained deaths or illnesses would be a very good reason to do this, otherwise, hope it's a single sad event.
mary

 

[aart]

Both the crop and the gizzard were impacted with grass?
Did you open the colon?
Do they have access to grass clippings?

Probable COD = Gluttony

 

[Sussex19]

I feed crushed oyster shells and they have access to pebbles, but I could only find one pebble in her gizzard.

Are they rounded type pebbles, like one might find in a river? If so, they aren't very effective, as they don't have any grinding edges.

 

[Possum-Pie]

The pebbles are not smooth...Oyster shell, gravel. I've not much experience looking in gizzards, but it was a large wad of twisted grass. I may never discover the cause, but she was fine the night before and dead in the A.M. I even found a few seeds in her mouth as it happened very suddenly. A neighbor said that she prob. fell off of her roost and broke her neck, but I highly doubt that as she was facing into the back corner of the coop and there was lots of straw on the floor.

Not gluttony...She is not overweight nor was her entire colon oversized. Just one 4cm section. I didn't open the colon (she was already beginning to smell and I was unsure I could handle the smell of feces and decay. There was no impaction behind the enlarged colon so I don't think it was overeating. They all forage so grass is part of their diet.

Spending $$$ on an actual necropsy is beyond our options. The heart chambers were normal size with no obvious clots or bleeding. The trachea/lungs are clear and unobstructed, Vent did have excess dried poop around it, but this sometimes happens. No eggs of any stage of development occluding her vent either. Sudden death happens to all animals, I am just hoping that it was an isolated occurrence and not a transmittable disease.

 

[aart]

Not gluttony

OK then ...gorging.

I've had a few birds that would gorge on new stuff.
Slaughtered a hen once whose gizzard was absolutely packed with granite grit.
That's when I stopped offering it in a feeder and just sprinkled some around in the run.

 

[Eggcessive]

Sorry for your loss. And sorry no one answered your thread until just today. I hadn’t noticed it before. It helps to post again sooner, to just place the thread up to the top again. How old was she and did she lay eggs? When doing a necropsy it helps to take pictures of the organs to post here. Did you see any evidence of internal egg laying, yellow fluid when the abdominal wall was opened, a large amount of fat deposits? I have a lot of small rocks in my chicken yard, but I still buy and put out some granite poultry grit for them to take. Oyster shell doesn’t work for helping the gizzard work. I have had hens die of gizzard impaction, due to eating weird things instead of the good balanced feed that was always out. As Mary said, check with your state vet to ask about a necropsy if something happens again. I found out that my state cost as little as $23 a couple of years ago if I brought the body in to the lab.

 

[ChickNanny13]

Sorry for your loss

Were you able to compare what you saw to some video off You Tube of a necropsy and what normal insides should more or less look like?

My girls have available chicken grit, which is soluble granite grit; will take note to what @aart mentioned. I've seen it available Grit & Oyster Shell Combos but no clue as to what it consist of, choosing to stick to singular ingredients.

 

[Possum-Pie]

Sorry for your loss. And sorry no one answered your thread until just today. I hadn’t noticed it before. It helps to post again sooner, to just place the thread up to the top again. How old was she and did she lay eggs? When doing a necropsy it helps to take pictures of the organs to post here. Did you see any evidence of internal egg laying, yellow fluid when the abdominal wall was opened, a large amount of fat deposits? I have a lot of small rocks in my chicken yard, but I still buy and put out some granite poultry grit for them to take. Oyster shell doesn’t work for helping the gizzard work. I have had hens die of gizzard impaction, due to eating weird things instead of the good balanced feed that was always out. As Mary said, check with your state vet to ask about a necropsy if something happens again. I found out that my state cost as little as $23 a couple of years ago if I brought the body in to the lab.

Thanks for the kind words. She was 2.5 years old. I've had 4 hens for 2 years and NEVER got 4 eggs in one day. I always suspected that one hen was sterile. Upon necropsy, I purposely looked at her ovaries and there were no visible eggs seen. I'm NOT a vet, but I would suspect she may have been the sterile one. No internal s/s of infection, no excess fat in the abdominal cavity, In humans, generally severe bowel impaction spreads from the impaction site upwards to the esophagus. The hen had normal lumen bowel down to mid abdomen where a 3-4cm dilation more than double the size of the normal bowel was present. I WISH that I'd excised that bowel to see if it were a tumor or an impaction....