Cataracts?

KsKingBee

Free Ranging
10 Years
Sep 29, 2013
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The Scenic Flint Hills of Kansas
I have a Peach Silver Pied two-year-old cock that I suspect has cataracts. He seems to not react to my hand on one side and when I moved him to another pen he had some trouble finding the food bowl. He has never roosted on a perch so I wonder if he has a depth perception problem.

There is only one tiny white spot on each eye right in the middle of the pupil. Don't look at the lice drinking at the eye, he has been treated with Ivermec for that when we took the pics. We caught every bird yesterday and treated everyone as well as checking bands, trimmed beaks, etc. We think we will run him to the vet this week.



 
Since most Vets don't raise peafowls i think its important to explain to them that some peafowl colors has genetics issues, i remember someone here asked me once about his peacock going blind, i asked what color he is? The guy asked what has the peacock color to do with this? I explained some colors has genetics issues and will go blind sometimes, he didn't believe me and kept visiting vets for a cure, nothing works after that. Later i found it was a charcoal peacock, and that's why he goes blind!

Edited: When i said here, i meant in my country.
 
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I have a Peach Silver Pied two-year-old cock that I suspect has cataracts. He seems to not react to my hand on one side and when I moved him to another pen he had some trouble finding the food bowl. He has never roosted on a perch so I wonder if he has a depth perception problem.

There is only one tiny white spot on each eye right in the middle of the pupil. Don't look at the lice drinking at the eye, he has been treated with Ivermec for that when we took the pics. We caught every bird yesterday and treated everyone as well as checking bands, trimmed beaks, etc. We think we will run him to the vet this week.




Okay, I found one of the old threads and bumped it. I am so sorry.
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Read this one: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/559096/is-he-a-cameo-or-peach-he-has-gone-blind-already
 
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Ya know, I sure wish someone would start a collection of DNA from these blind birds so peach/cameo breeders could screen for it and we could get it out of the breeding stock. Imagine if you had been breeding that bird for 5 or 6 years when it turned up. (You probably beat me to that by a full 24 hours)
 
BTW, I have been wracking my nearly-senile brain, because I couldn't remember, but I think this is what was once referred to as the "cameo death gene" -- I couldn't remember if the birds actually had increased mortality from the gene itself, or simply as a consequence of the blindness. I'm am pretty sure there was more info over on the UPA forum (where the heck did it go???), but I found a couple of old threads with references to it here on BYC. You'll have to scroll through the page to find the stuff...

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/847427/peafowl-genetics-for-dummies-in-other-words-us/50

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/886960/peach-peafowl-any-health-or-genetic-problems

There's also a reference on this page which suggests bronze (or some of them) may have done variable white molting, but were thought not to go blind:

http://www.clnjr.com/Buford Bronze Peafowl.htm

However, if you read carefully in the first two BYC threads that I linked above, there is a mention of a bronze bird with progressive white that became blind. So perhaps there is an association after all?

@Birdrain92 , hurry up with that education of yours and see if you can't research this for us! This takes more lab equipment that even @casportpony has (I think)...
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How attached to him are you?


-Kathy


Just enough to go out of my way to find a better place for him.  His color is getting very nice and he is pretty tame.  Last night we watched as he was wanting to get up on the roost with the hens.  You can tell he has some hazy vision, he wanted to jump so bad, he just couldn't bring himself to make the leap.


Maybe you could make a platform for him to roost on? Then he wouldn't fear missing the "roost" and falling to the ground.
 
Crud, isn't there a blindness issue in peach?
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I gotta go search old threads... I had forgotten about it. Might be over on UPA & my membership has lapsed.
 
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Yes there is, i hatched an Emu chick last month which looked like this, i knew since he hatched that he will get problems seeing properly and that's what happens.
 

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