- Dec 6, 2010
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This morning I found one of my hens keeled over in her pen. Her body was right under a favorite roosting spot and her neck felt floppy, so I assumed she'd fallen for some reason, perhaps jostled off by one of her flock, and since it had been a cold night and it was early morning, I thought I'd butcher her and feed her to the dogs. Waste not want not, and all that! But when I eviscerated her, I didn't see her liver. I pulled out everything in the abdominal cavity and thought I had accidentally snagged a bit of her lungs, because I saw several small, very bloody, mottled blobs of reddish purple mushy stuff. Turns out the lungs were fine, and those mushy falling-apart blobs turned out to be the liver, but not like any liver I've ever seen before--big flattened lobes of smooth dark brown tissue. Looking more closely, I saw that what I'd first interpreted as mottling was really a sort of granulation, each 1/2 mm granule stuck to all the others in a large mass, looking almost like the tiny eggs awaiting laying. I'll try and attach a photo of the liver along with one lung and the heart, just for reference. [WARNING: GRAPHIC!!!
What the heck? What on earth happened to my poor hen's liver? Anyone ever seen anything like this before? What would cause such a thing? Can I do anything to prevent repeats? Should I quarantine the rest of the flock? Should I throw out the hen's remains, or is it probably safe to feed to my dogs?
Thanks for the help!
What the heck? What on earth happened to my poor hen's liver? Anyone ever seen anything like this before? What would cause such a thing? Can I do anything to prevent repeats? Should I quarantine the rest of the flock? Should I throw out the hen's remains, or is it probably safe to feed to my dogs?
Thanks for the help!
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