Necropsy photos

Sue Gremlin

Crowing
11 Years
Jan 1, 2013
974
1,984
322
Colebrook, CT
My partridge Chanticler started to go downhill about a week ago and died yesterday. All of my other chickens are fine.

She started to sleep on the nest box at night, lost weight rapidly despite being very interested in food, stumbled a little, and had a poopy butt.

Necropsy findings:
I started with her mouth and airway, which all looked normal.

Her heart looked very weird grossly, and when I picked it out and looked at it, it was very small.
Then I opened her abdomen and found it filled with purulent material.

She apparently died of peritonitis. Her ovary was very fibrous and hard, and was adhered to her body wall. Poor thing.

Being a parasitology student, I took the opportunity to open her digestive tract. Her intestinal contents revealed several types of intestinal worms.

Here is what her peritoneum looked like before I opened it. No lesions on the liver. Spleen, ventriculus, crop and kidneys also unremarkable.

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This is what greeted me when I opened her peritoneum

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Her heart was very small.

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What is left of her ovary, which was so adhered and weird and fibrous that I couldn't get it out of her body cavity.
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The worms I rinsed from her large intestine and ceca (plate is marked with L) and the small intestine (S). I will sort through them over the weekend and ID them. So far I've ID'd Ascaridia and Heterakis, but also see tapeworms and threadworms. Probably more!
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Yeah, it was.

I'd also like to point out that while I was examining and removing the guts from my chicken, and as she was totally laid out in the front yard, the mailman drove up and caught me. I had to explain. I am not convinced that he doesn't think I am a serial killer.
LOL. No one would believe the mailman, they'd probably give him a breathalyzer test.
 
I am not convinced that he doesn't think I am a serial killer.

Oh boy!
When my DH was much younger, someone hit a deer in front of him. The deer died on the side of the highway behind the guard rail in the tall grass.
Well, DH decided to gut it and take it home. A couple was driving by just as DH stood up, covered in blood with a hunting knife in his hands, deer not visible to the couple. Needless to say, they got the hell out of there in a hurry. Misunderstandings abound.
 

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