Growths on liver. Safe to eat?

[lomine]

I butchered duck for the first time today and found these strange looking growths on the liver of one of them. The other liver (same bird) also had a few but they mere much smaller. No growths on any other organs. One of the little balls sort of popped off. Does anyone know what these are? Is it safe to eat the meat?

 

[Dawnclucks22]

Fat maybe? What did you feed them before you butchered?

 

[mymilliefleur]

They look like fat deposits to me, but I'm not sure. I've never seen anything like it. What did you feed it, how old was it, and did the bird have health issues prior to processing?
I don't see why the meat would be bad. I'm sure it's fine to consume the rest of the bird.

 

[rebrascora]

It would be useful to see them in context with the rest of the liver to get an idea of where they were attached and size comparison. Personally, it looks more like cysts than fat to me. When you say one "popped off", do you mean it burst or separated from the cluster?
They aren't the immature ova from a female ovary are they? Those would be located close to the liver. It seems odd that the other bird had them too if they are an abnormality. How old were the birds and were they female? I've only processed adult chicken hens and cockerels and roosters so I'm no expert on duck anatomy, but just guessing based on Ova I have seen in chickens.

 

[coach723]

I'm going to second rebrascora on the ovaries as you say "the other liver-same bird", meaning you saw two organs. There should be only one liver in a duck, but two ovaries, my understanding is that the left ovary is usually the functional one, which would explain the differences in the two. I have no personal experience with ducks, so this is info from reading on avian biology/anatomy in general, rather than personal experience. But it does look similar to a chicken ovary, which I have seen.

 

[lomine]

To clarify, only one of the birds had these growths but it had them on both livers. The ones on the liver I didn’t take a picture of were smaller and there were fewer. Sorry if my post was confusing. The bird was a drake, 18 weeks, and has been given Purina Flock Raiser the entire time. It did get treats every no and then but the only treat with fat would be mealworms. I don’t think it would have eaten enough of those to be considered a fatty diet. I didn’t notice any signs of illness.

By popped off, the whole growth came off. And it was almost perfectly round. In the upper right side of the second picture you can see the indention where it came out. The growths were all located along the outer edge of the liver (not where it connects to the other organs). Unfortunately the innards are all in the garbage now and I didn’t take any other pictures. If it helps the one that came off was pea sized and the liver was a bit bigger than a 10 month old cockerels liver.

 

[rebrascora]

Apologies, I think I misread the original post. Was there just one duck butchered or more than one butchered but only one had these anomalies and they were attached to both liver lobes?

Edited to add....
I see we posted at the same time and you have clarified the situation so please ignore.

 

[lomine]

I guess I should say it was the other half of the liver. I don’t know if there is a term for the two halves. But it was the liver.

It had a penis so it was a drake.

 

[rebrascora]

I'm going back to my original diagnosis of cycts or possible tumours. If you punctured them were they fluid filled or solid or didn't you try that? The "socket" from which it was dislodged appears to have a light patch in the centre perhaps where it was attached or "feeding" off the liver.
I probably would not eat the liver, but I would certainly eat the meat. I would make a point of cooking it thoroughly though.... no pink flesh served from that one.

 

[lomine]

That’s kind of what I was thinking too, a tumor or something. I didn’t pop any but the one that came off was squishy. I tossed the liver cause I wasn’t eating that.