Got our new run of Cornish Rocks from Tractor Supply, and I can say this years selection doesn't look that great. We had 2 fatalities and about 4 bird with what i would call dislocated legs. Is this something that develops and can be prevented or what?
From what I've read it's just a genetic tendency and there's nothing you can do about it, sorry.
One bit of research I read implicated lack of (or loss of) circulation, but another more recent study I read found it was caused by a type of leaky gut syndrome and it was bacteria from the gastrointestinal tract that they found in the joints, colonizing and destroying them. It was in the Staph family if I recall correctly.
Also are these chickens with this leg problem safe to eat? Thanks so much!!!
Probably safe to eat. But with time and experience you will most likely learn to tell the taste of an animal that suffered. It has body-wide impact, the stress hormones and pain causes release of stored toxins into the flesh and bloodstream, lactic acid buildup destroys the muscles, and a whole host of physiological effects occur which render the meat quite cruddy compared to a healthy happy bird's meat. Suffering has a flavor as strange as that may sound.
When suffering was involved, if it was acute, short term suffering, the bodies rot abnormally fast, bloat up quickly, etc, compared to a sudden death without suffering prior to it. Whether suffering was acute or chronic one may suspect that any present hazards to human safety, i.e. Salmonella, may be present in greater or stronger form due to being less controlled by the weakened immune system of the animal that was suffering, but really precautions against that sort of thing should be taken anyway.
It's about the same with chronic, long term suffering, rotting often begins very quickly, but in this case the bodies often exhibit no rigor mortis whatsoever, as the mitochondria that power the cells were exhausted in the process of suffering, and they may rot extra slow and fail to stiffen like normal corpses.
So if the animals suffered before death, process them quickly I suggest, as they will become overridden by pathogenic opportunistic bacteria both from without and within, abnormally quickly after death, as the leucocytes and immune system were also over-taxed and stressed by the suffering. Prolonged stress caused by physical or psychological suffering harms everything in the body including the gastrointestinal flora and fauna or microbiota, leading to a proliferation of pathogens.
Personally I would not eat the internal organs of an animal that suffered, and really I only eat animals that suffered before death on very rare occasions; mainly I consign them to the dogs, cats, etc.
Best wishes.
