Dead chicken need helping trying to figure out the cause

[dani2]

Hi,

I had a hen that started to look egg bound about 4 days ago I successfully treated one for this problem a few weeks ago and I did the same for this hen and she did not improve yesterday and today she was very bad so i went ahead and put her out of her misery. During the week she just kept bloating up and at the end was walking like a penguin it took a little bit of working up to it but I opened her up to try and figure out what was wrong. I dont mind butchering regular chickens but she had bloated so much I was nervous about what was swelling up I assumed it was a egg thing. I pulled some feathers off enough to see the abdomin which was very swolen like a water balloon. I cur through the first layer of skin thinking this was part of the intestines or something swolen but it was actually in the abdomin cavity not the intestines. I poked a quick hole and drained probably a quarter of liquid out it had no real smell it was yellow just like pee. Any idea what may have gone wrong even yesterday she still wanted to eat and drink.

Thanks in advance Nicki

 

[Cloverleaf Farm]

Sounds like ascites...I don't know if chickens respond to heart conditions the same way as dogs and cats (I'm a vet tech, and dogs and cats are mostly what I deal with) but with certain types of heart conditions they build up light yellow fluid in their abdomen, called ascites.

I'm sorry for your loss!!

But good for you for doing the hard part of trying to figure out what was wrong with her!! you could always send some of the fluid to your vets office and they can have their lab ID the fluid for you...

 

[dani2]

Thanks for the reply this was a older chicken I was just puzzled by all the yellow fluid it is already gone so no chance of testing I went way out before popping a hole just incase it was really horrible. I will look up ascities I just briefly looked at the other organs and did not see anything that looked horrible I was really expecting to see a tangled mess of eggs or something.

 

[Cloverleaf Farm]

Being an older chicken, the heart condition makes sense then too.

 

[dani2]

I did a search on google images for chicken ascities and even found pictures which match what I saw did a little more looking at articles on google and found that this is apparently quite common in broilers.

Thanks so much for the help Nicki