Air filled turkey breast, what caused it?

[marquisella]

Turkey breast filled with air, smelled bad What is it? Discovered when processing. No sign of disease on organs. Air under the skin, almost no breast meat. Like popping a balloon. Threw it out, but I felt another live tom and his breast is squishy as well...I bought them all at around 6 months from 2 different places. I had them in the same pen, but first one, then the rest afterwards.

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

It's the birds air sack, the toms fill it with air and that's how they make the drumming sound.

Steve

 

[marquisella]

Quote:
Ok, But there was no breast! They should have had a good breast at 6 mos. old, and it really stunk! Don't tell me I threw out birds I could have eaten? The person that did the processing, who has experience doing it, said he never saw something like that...

 

[ivan3]

From the description, I'd guess either a simple, or tension, pneumothorax with a `sterile' infection. Enough air leaked at sufficient pressure to prevent normal growth of breast muscle, or the developing muscle degenerated.

Just a guess.

 

[ColbyNTX]

What breed was it? That would let us know about what kind of breast it would have at 6 months with the right feed. A royal palm would have a tiny breast at 6 months while a broad breasted would be huge.

 

[marquisella]

Quote:
I bought them as Broad Breasted Whites. They were about 6 months old.

All the tissue looked healthy, the only odd things were the lack of breast meat, and the foul smelling air that was inside.

They were not sick, we looked at the insides, all appeared to be healthy.