Hi all,
I very suddenly lost my 1 year old, apparently healthy Swedish Flower hen yesterday and would like to share as this may be useful to others. She had been bright, alert, eating and laying just fine with no signs of illness, and then she was dead in the nestbox. She was in perfectly good flesh. I opened her, expecting to find her egg-bound or something similar, but I found that the surface of many of her organs were covered in urate crystals, indicating visceral gout.
Gout is a metabolic issue from one of a few potential sources: Lack of water, genetics, Bad Ca : P ratio, vitamin A deficiency, D3 excess, etc. Here's an article on the topic:
https://en.engormix.com/poultry-industry/articles/avian-gout-t34423.htm
I found these sheets of urate crystals on her liver and kidneys (kidneys not pictured), and her pericardium and heart were just covered with it. Her heart was very hard and it appeared that the mechanical presence of these crystals physically interfered with it beating. I also found blobs of urate in the great vessels exiting the heart.
Upon reading a bit about it, I learned that this can apparently cause sudden death like this. Her kidneys failed because of the physical damage caused by the urate crystals clogging the delicate kidney tubules, and then things build up like this. Which organ failure killed her this suddenly, I am not sure. There was no ascites or any other abnormalities to her abdomen, and her egg factory was obviously in full production, she had a full egg almost ready to go and several healthy-looking follicles ready for the next batch.
Sheets of crystals on the surface of the liver and surface of the pericardium (no buildup of pericardial fluid)
Heart with the pericardium removed
I very suddenly lost my 1 year old, apparently healthy Swedish Flower hen yesterday and would like to share as this may be useful to others. She had been bright, alert, eating and laying just fine with no signs of illness, and then she was dead in the nestbox. She was in perfectly good flesh. I opened her, expecting to find her egg-bound or something similar, but I found that the surface of many of her organs were covered in urate crystals, indicating visceral gout.
Gout is a metabolic issue from one of a few potential sources: Lack of water, genetics, Bad Ca : P ratio, vitamin A deficiency, D3 excess, etc. Here's an article on the topic:
https://en.engormix.com/poultry-industry/articles/avian-gout-t34423.htm
I found these sheets of urate crystals on her liver and kidneys (kidneys not pictured), and her pericardium and heart were just covered with it. Her heart was very hard and it appeared that the mechanical presence of these crystals physically interfered with it beating. I also found blobs of urate in the great vessels exiting the heart.
Upon reading a bit about it, I learned that this can apparently cause sudden death like this. Her kidneys failed because of the physical damage caused by the urate crystals clogging the delicate kidney tubules, and then things build up like this. Which organ failure killed her this suddenly, I am not sure. There was no ascites or any other abnormalities to her abdomen, and her egg factory was obviously in full production, she had a full egg almost ready to go and several healthy-looking follicles ready for the next batch.
Sheets of crystals on the surface of the liver and surface of the pericardium (no buildup of pericardial fluid)
Heart with the pericardium removed
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