Necropsy photos

[Sue Gremlin]

Sorry for your loss of a sweet bird but I commend you with 100 ‘s on those great photos.

Thank you, she really was a sweet girl. I will miss her.

 

[staceyj]

Awww she was definitely precious

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Species identified:
Railletina

Heterakis gallinarum, this blurry shot is of a female full of eggs and the business end of a male.

Ascaridia galli

 

[Dawnclucks22]

I would never have the heart to do a necropsy on my own pet chicken, but I think that’s incredible what you’ve found and that you’ve been able to identify the worm species. The mailman story is great too.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

I would never have the heart to do a necropsy on my own pet chicken, but I think that’s incredible what you’ve found and that you’ve been able to identify the worm species. The mailman story is great too.

Thank you! But it's not all that impressive. I'm a grad student studying veterinary parasitology and have a lot of resources at my fingertips.

 

[MissChick@dee]

Sorry for your loss awesome job on the necropsy. What type deworming do you use and how do you dose it?

 

[Sue Gremlin]

I'll give them an oral dose of 20 mg/kg fenbendazole once a day for three days, it should take care of everything in one shot.

I'm going to wait til they're done molting in a couple of weeks.

 

[MissChick@dee]

Not to sound stupid but do you do maintenance dewormer? Annually semiannually?

 

[staceyj]

I'll give them an oral dose of 20 mg/kg fenbendazole once a day for three days, it should take care of everything in one shot.

I'm going to wait til they're done molting in a couple of weeks.

Is that because of potential feather deformity or just overwhelming them?

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Not to sound stupid but do you do maintenance dewormer? Annually semiannually?

Not stupid! No, I don't deworm them unless there's evidence of an issue. I check the feces periodically.
They go out and run around and eat God knows what, so I was not surprised she had worms. There are turkeys galore on our property, and they get infected with Heterakis and Ascaridia.
I don't think they are inherently bad, and suspect the other chickens have lower burdens. There are a lot of cecal worms, but honestly they aren't very pathogenic in chickens.