Necropsy photo's **GRAPHIC** Marek's disease, for info

[coach723]

This is one of my roo's, he's 6 years old.

 

[coach723]

This is one of my hens, fairly certain she has it also, but the eye looks a bit different. She also raises one foot up sometimes and shakes it (fairly often), like she thinks something is stuck to it, so possible neural also. Edit, forgot to add, she's 10 years old.

 

[casportpony]

This is one of my roo's, he's 6 years old.

Great pictures! you should enter @All4Eggz's contest!
Eye-Deal Poultry Eye Photo Contest

 

[casportpony]

This is informational for those that may have never dealt with this.
I have Marek's in my flock, most of my symptomatic birds have had occular symptoms, I have not had a bird with the common paralysis.
This bird was acting normally until 4 days ago, illustration of how well they can hide disease. No occular symptoms in this bird, no paralysis.
Found her standing with eyes closed, and a doughy crop. When I picked her up she was very thin. She was wormed in mid March and I did not note any issues then.
Treated to try to get the crop moving. Nothing was passing through her, even fluids, she was bringing everything back up even when not being handled. One small abnormal dropping in 48 hours, she was severely dehydrated and I could not get fluids in her. So I culled and opened her up. I did not send off for necropsy since I already know I have Marek's. This is what Marek's can do to a bird. Sorry for some pics that are blurry, was doing this rather quickly. As you can see she had tumors everywhere, liver wasn't too bad, but did have tumors, heart and lungs likewise, but everywhere else was affected. Gizzard was huge and crammed full (you can see it in the first picture), lower digestion had just stopped, her intestines were very impacted by tumors.

So sorry for your loss, but thanks for sharing.

 

[Gizabelle]

Thank you for sharing your pictures and experience.
I have Marek's in my flock as well (confirmed by state lab). I lost another hen shortly after receiving the report and considered opening her up to see for myself, but couldn't bring myself to do it.
I'm so sorry about your birds. Marek's is truly awful, but stick with your survivors long enough and you may find resistant birds. Of my 5 remaining hens, 2 have made it past the two year mark, so it looks (knock-on-wood) like these two at least wil be ok.
Best wishes to you.

 

[Tankueray]

Wow, thank you for the eye photos! Definitely not the floating gray eyeball that seems to be the most common picture out there. The distinction I was always told was that the pupil/iris was no longer round, and both eyes are different, which is quite clear in your roo. The hen looks more round and I'm with you, I'd be hesitant to call it if there wasn't already a diagnosis. The top eye looks not round, the bottom one looks pretty normal, except for the eclipse looking ring, but I might write that off as age too.

I had a pullet at one point that looked like she had kermit the frog eyes, I think there's a pic somewhere in one of my threads. The pupil was very dark from extra melanotic genes making it look that way, but the opening to the iris was still round and still reacted to light as it should (both the same). Disease can destroy color (as in the grey eye), but I've never seen it add it and the eye still be fully functional, so I hope I'm in the clear, but now I'm a bit freaked out and going to look at everyone's eyes tonight.