Home necropsy

[Bkaye]

So we have had a Brahma who is about 8 months old acting off for the past few weeks. She started keeping to herself and standing around with her eyes closed. Went off food and progressively got worse. I have Marek’s in my flock and assumed she had some sort of cancer, my main reason for suspecting this is she had occular Marek’s too. I gave her amoxicillin on an off chance she had an infection as well as tube fed her. Nothing seemed to work and she steadily declined. I ended up culling her today and did a very crude necropsy with my husbands help. This is the second one I’ve done and the first one was really obvious on the cause. Really not sure what her issue was even after cutting her open. Below are some pictures.

Her intestines to me look off but like I said I’m familiar with what I’m looking at. We looked at some pics of the chicken anatomy while we are doing this. Also in her cavity once the organs were removed there appeared to be bumps, not sure if those are some time of deposit or something else.

Any suggestions or anything that can be pointed out is greatly appreciated. I’m eager to learn.

Sorry for the lack of pics and the poor quality but it’s all that was taken.

 

[Eggcessive]

I am not any authority on necropsies, but just an amateur. Did you nick any organs when you opened the abdomen? With all of the fat and the blood clots, it suggests fatty liver disease at first to me. However, the liver looks red, not discolored, which is usually the case. But I think there is some evidence of ovarian cancer in the last 2 pictures, evidenced by the small nodules in the center of the last 2 pictures. The ceca in the third picture looks pretty big. Hopefully other people with more experience butchering chickens will chime in. Sorry for your loss, and kudos to you for doing the necropsy and for wanting to learn about what was going on.

 

[Eggcessive]

Since I am not very good at identifying cancer of the ovary, and could be wrong, I am posting some links with pictures:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...rmal-ovary-with-a-hierarchy-of_fig1_258697988

https://www.semanticscholar.org/pap...c044ba1780af3c4742d7f7742d8d0e9243b5/figure/2

 

[Bkaye]

The heart was cut before I took the picture. In my opinion her liver looked healthy but I have nothing to compare it to. The nodules on the back is one of the things I was suspicious about as was the ceca. Do you know what would cause the ceca to look like it does?

 

[Eggcessive]

No, I don’t know. The 2 ceca is where some of the food passing through the bowel is fermented, so it might be air. I just don’t know. Others may look at the pictures and see more.

 

[Bkaye]

No, I don’t know. The 2 ceca is where some of the food passing through the bowel is fermented, so it might be air. I just don’t know. Others may look at the pictures and see more.

Thank you!

 

[coach723]

Did you open the ceca and see what the contents looked like? Was she laying before she got sick? Were her droppings normal? I'm wondering about cecal worms. I don't see any obvious lesions or ulcerations, but they can cause thickening of the cecum. They can also carry histomoniasis (blackhead disease), which in chickens can sometimes be asymptomatic, but common symptoms are very similar to what you describe. Histomoniasis can also affect the liver. Those are also pretty common symptoms of any sick bird, so that may not be a factor at all. I don't think the ovaries look normal, I don't see any developing egg follicles at all. There is a fair amount of fat in the abdomen, and the liver looks a little off to me, but I don't see any obvious lesions like you tend to with visceral Marek's, or any obvious hemorrhage from liver fracture. In the second and fourth picture there may be some cutaneous lesions at the bases of the feathers on the skin on the right side, that could be Marek's also, hard to tell in a picture. The problem with Marek's is that it really weakens their immune systems and makes them more susceptible to other things that a healthy bird might be able to overcome, and honestly every bird can look a little different. I have Marek's and most of my symptomatic birds have occular or visceral symptoms/tumors.
As an aside, I only have one brahma left, mine seemed to be very suceptible to the virus. The one I have left has occular symptoms, and I have 2 of her offspring left that are mixes, they all have occular symptoms.

 

[Bkaye]

We did open the ceca, for the most part it was just full of air, very little bile or matter in it. I had tube fed her the night prior to culling her and she still had a large portion of it still in her crop.

She was laying before she got sick and was laying regularly to the best of my knowledge. All birds in this coop are Brahmas so I can’t tell their eggs apart, however I only had 2 actively laying as the rest have been molting. If I had to guess her last egg would have been 3-4 weeks ago.

I do know a few of the birds had cecal worms a while back. I worm them monthly due to the high worm load they seem to get. I was a couple weeks behind in my worming and noticed some worms in the cecal poop in a diff bird so wormed them that night. Their second dose was November 8th. I used Valbazen. They are due for worming again next week. I was kinda curious if could have been blackhead after @Eggcessive made the comment about the ceca. I didn’t notice any lesions are anything in the ceca when we cut it. I really should have got more pictures.

As far as the fat in the abdomen I thought it seemed like a bit much especially since she had lost a considerable amount of weight and was nothing but bones. I do not feed treats, I feed them all 20% all flock feed, just recently started fermenting it due to a lot of intestinal issues I keep having with my bantams to see if it helps any.

That’s interesting your Brahmas haven’t seemed to do well with the Marek’s you have. Ours have done really well. This is the second one I’ve lost in the past year since our diagnosis. The first had occular Marek’s and just went overnight one day, then this girl. This girl was an offspring to my original. I do another of my original girls who looks like she is starting to develop occular, her pupils are starting to look off.

Out of curiosity what breed has been the best for you? My D’anvers have been by far the most affected and majority have developed paralysis.

 

[coach723]

For the fat in the abdomen, sometimes birds are more genetically prone to storing fat there. I had a bunch of purchased chicks one year that all got fat, all were fed the same as the rest of my flock, and the rest were not fat, just that batch.
So far for me, the mixed breeds have done better. I've lost all but one of my Gold Laced Wyandottes, have the one brahama left. I had Speckled Sussex's for a year (dumbest birds I've ever had) and lost all of them to a fox, so never got a chance to see how they would do long term, but none had shown symptoms up to then. My EE's and my sex links have been less affected (something good about sex links!) though my black sex links have done better than the red's, and many of my barnyard mixes have shown no signs, except for every chick I hatched out of my brahma hen. I lost a brahma roo a few years ago, before I knew I was dealing with Marek's. He just seemed to have a really lousy immune system. In hindsight, I wonder if he was really my canary in the coal mine and I just didn't recognize it. I added Egyptian Fayoumi's in February and so far I have seen no signs in any of them. I plan to breed those and cross them with my others, and see how it goes. They are noisier than my others! It may be less about a particular breed than it is about the actual genetic lines they come from, with the exceptions of certain breeds that are well known to be more susceptible, like silkies. And the particular strain of Marek's probably matters too. And when purchasing from a hatchery or feed store, there isn't really any way to know genetics. So I, like many others, am going to try to breed asymptomtic birds in the hope that I end up with more resistant birds in the long run.
It's always frustrating when a necropsy doesn't show something obvious. I've had a few where everything looked really normal and I couldn't find a real good reason for cause of illness or death. Sometimes labs might help, but it's hard to know. And when you know you have Marek's it becomes very cost heavy if you try to get every one of them done proffessionally.