Hi.
I had a year old BCM that died very suddenly last week. She was one of my best layers and had been laying daily up to the point she died. She appeared fine in the morning.... I have a large mixed flock and I can't say that I check each one individually, but if one is off colour it's usually pretty obvious and there was no sign of this, but she was lying dead in the yard when I came to lock them up. No external injuries or feathers displaced so I believe it was natural causes. I do have Mareks in the flock but my gut feeling is that this wasn't the issue.
I did find a quite bad lice infestation and will be dusting the other chickens as a result, but this in itself will not have killed her. What I found which concerned me most was a large layer of yellow fat about a quarter of an inch thick covering the whole of her abdomen. We are talking about an area the size of a 5" diameter circle, 1/4 inch thick. This extended up to her liver (which looked healthy) and right down to her vent and from inner leg "pit" to leg "pit".... an apron of it basically. Her reproductive tract appeared ok with egg "yolks" in the system but no formed eggs. I found one round worm when I checked her intestines.... yes I opened them up to check.... yuk..... but I wanted to be sure. Her gizzard had a slight deformity in that there was a bleb on one side of it almost like a hernia, but it had really just enlarged the size of it inside and didn't appear to be a weakness as such. The gizzard was packed solid with green fibrous material though and I am leaning towards impacted gizzard being the cause of death. I've had problems with this before in other hens and her lower intestines were not particularly "full".
What concerns me most is that layer of yellow fat though!. .
I have a mixed flock and I feed layers pellets ad lib (until recently I've fermented some but I've just gone back to all dry a week ago, as they were getting a bit bored with the fermented). I also give them soaked mixed corn, maybe between 10- 20% and they are completely free range during the day. This was one of the more dominant hens, so she will have had possibly slightly more of her share of mixed corn than the others... it is scattered so they can't hog the feed bowl and gorge on it. Is the mixed corn to blame for the yellow flab.... must confess it made me think about my own bad diet habits and belly flab when I saw it!! (I'm a bit of a chocaholic!)
The flock rearer that the feed store carries is medicated, so I am loath to feed it to my whole flock of predominantly layers, but I have a couple of cockerels within the flock and some youngsters, so I'm conscious that the cockerels are not getting the best diet and the mixed corn is an attempt to redress the high calcium levels of the layer feed. The cockerels have been doing fine on this diet for a year and a half and so have the hens or so I believed until I opened this one up and found this flab! It's not something I have seen with previous necropsies but they were quite emaciated due to Mareks.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to take photos of the post mortem, so my written description is the best I can do.
Any thoughts from those experienced at looking at the inner workings of chickens either doing necropsies or butchering birds would be appreciated.
Thanks
Barbara
I had a year old BCM that died very suddenly last week. She was one of my best layers and had been laying daily up to the point she died. She appeared fine in the morning.... I have a large mixed flock and I can't say that I check each one individually, but if one is off colour it's usually pretty obvious and there was no sign of this, but she was lying dead in the yard when I came to lock them up. No external injuries or feathers displaced so I believe it was natural causes. I do have Mareks in the flock but my gut feeling is that this wasn't the issue.
I did find a quite bad lice infestation and will be dusting the other chickens as a result, but this in itself will not have killed her. What I found which concerned me most was a large layer of yellow fat about a quarter of an inch thick covering the whole of her abdomen. We are talking about an area the size of a 5" diameter circle, 1/4 inch thick. This extended up to her liver (which looked healthy) and right down to her vent and from inner leg "pit" to leg "pit".... an apron of it basically. Her reproductive tract appeared ok with egg "yolks" in the system but no formed eggs. I found one round worm when I checked her intestines.... yes I opened them up to check.... yuk..... but I wanted to be sure. Her gizzard had a slight deformity in that there was a bleb on one side of it almost like a hernia, but it had really just enlarged the size of it inside and didn't appear to be a weakness as such. The gizzard was packed solid with green fibrous material though and I am leaning towards impacted gizzard being the cause of death. I've had problems with this before in other hens and her lower intestines were not particularly "full".
What concerns me most is that layer of yellow fat though!. .
I have a mixed flock and I feed layers pellets ad lib (until recently I've fermented some but I've just gone back to all dry a week ago, as they were getting a bit bored with the fermented). I also give them soaked mixed corn, maybe between 10- 20% and they are completely free range during the day. This was one of the more dominant hens, so she will have had possibly slightly more of her share of mixed corn than the others... it is scattered so they can't hog the feed bowl and gorge on it. Is the mixed corn to blame for the yellow flab.... must confess it made me think about my own bad diet habits and belly flab when I saw it!! (I'm a bit of a chocaholic!)
The flock rearer that the feed store carries is medicated, so I am loath to feed it to my whole flock of predominantly layers, but I have a couple of cockerels within the flock and some youngsters, so I'm conscious that the cockerels are not getting the best diet and the mixed corn is an attempt to redress the high calcium levels of the layer feed. The cockerels have been doing fine on this diet for a year and a half and so have the hens or so I believed until I opened this one up and found this flab! It's not something I have seen with previous necropsies but they were quite emaciated due to Mareks.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to take photos of the post mortem, so my written description is the best I can do.
Any thoughts from those experienced at looking at the inner workings of chickens either doing necropsies or butchering birds would be appreciated.
Thanks
Barbara
