Necropsy Mystery

[zilla963]

We had a chicken get sick and was not responding to care so we culled her and took a look inside..
But its a mystery as to why she was sick
Here is the info

Pullet 5.5 mo old cuckoo marans, not yet laying.
found first huddling outside when every one else went in, not sure if it was sick at that point.
Next morning visibly slow and panting ( NOT gasping)
We took her inside to sick bay and gave some VETRX and water.. not interested in anything, forced water and vetrx ( about 1cc)

It sat in its pen bouncing her butt up and down like she was straining so we thought she may be egg bound.

we took her up stairs to examine her closer and perhaps soak her for eggbound... she was completely empty, nothing in crop, no egg. the vent was puckering a bit, we cleaned it off but that was it..

she was stressed by all this and went down hill from there. Since she did not recover after about an hour we culled her.

This is what we found
Nothing. Nothing in the crop, nothing in the tract, a little greens and grit in the gizzard ( normal) but the weirdest part was coming out her butt was this yellow goo and it seemed like her vent was sealed shut because inside the vent it was a big pouch of air.. we squeezed it and no air would come out... it was sealed tight...

we did not see the goo when we were cleaning her so I am thinking it came out when she was culled. Its apparent that she had not eaten in quite awhile...

Any ideas would be helpful ( there were no respiratory symptoms at all )

 

[Judy]

The air and yellow stuff could simply be what happened to old intestinal contents when she stopped eating. Unfortunately, you'll probably never know. Could be some kind of cancer somewhere, I suppose. I don't even have an intelligent guess. At least it doesn't sound contagious.

 

[zilla963]

the only other thing that looked weird ( and didnt seem related so I didnt mention it) was her one knee joint looked like it had some damage and then healed over and scarred... so it left a big knot on her leg.. it wasnt restricting her movement, there was no hobbling... there was some bruising on her breast bone I figured because she spent so much time on her breast in the last few hours...
Interesting.. ok ..well thanks for your input.. the only thing worse than not knowing what it is - is having something you dont know what it its and its contagious! but it doesnt seem to be the case.. every one else is acting normal...