Oil??? Is this normal?

[allymeagan]

I did up a meat bird yesterday, and it's the first time I've done one after really cold temps, but I don't know if that makes a difference. But when I cut it open to gut it, it was full of oil.

Is that normal? I've done birds before, but never in this cold of winter (-40*C at night). They're inside and have a heat lamp, but most of them don't sleep under it. It was weird . . . lots of oil, like, almost two cups. Everything else looked normal and everything, but just wondering.

Very interested in what everyone has to say about this!

Allison

 

[the1much]

never heard of that,, lol,, i havent done chickens in extreme cold,, but have done many animals in below freezing,,lol and never oil,,, what breed?

 

[allymeagan]

They're just a cornish x, I believe.

 

[the1much]

wowz,,,,hmmm,,, well hopefully greyfields or someone expierienced with them will chime in,, i cant even imagine a bird having that much oil in them.. will be interesting..

 

[patandchickens]

Probably not oil. You're sure it wasn't the sort of straw-colored slightly viscous peritoneal fluid you get from ascites? Which is not that uncommon in meat birds?

Pat

 

[Brunty_Farms]

When you say oil are you talking like a thick motor oil consistancy?

Or just a fluid? What I'm getting from your description it was a fluid, probably a yellowish color? If this is the case it was a heart attack in progress. If you would have waited any longer it pobably would have flipped.

I would be cautious of eating the bird. Any bird we butcher that has fluid in the cavity is ground up for dog food.

 

[allymeagan]

It was yellowy, but really oily. Like canola oil. It pretty much filled the cavity around all the other stuff.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Ok, ya probably heart attack. Common for meat birds over 8 weeks. How old were yours?

 

[Brunty_Farms]

This will help you better understand. Ascitis is the fluid in the cavity leaking from the liver. Both heart attacks and ascitis will cause your bird to have the fluid, either way the bottom line is the fluid in the body cavity restricts the blood flow to the heart and depriving the rest of the body of oxygen.... So you can call it heart attack, suffication, or ascitis. The cooler weather will help trigger ascitis. Read the bellow and you will get a glimps.

Venous blood from the bird’s body first enters a collecting chamber of the heart called the right atrium and then passes through a simple flap-like valve into a pumping chamber called the right ventricle. The right ventricle normally pumps at a low pressure that is just sufficient to push all of the returning venous blood through the blood vessels of the lungs. Maintaining this low pumping pressure reduces the work load of the heart and prevents swelling and fluid accumulation in the lungs (pulmonary edema). When excessive blood flow causes the heart to increase pressure to the lung (pulmonary hypertension), the relative inflexibility of the lungs causes fluid from the blood vessels to begin to move into the lung tissues.

Soon after it begins, pulmonary hypertension causes the wall of the right ventricle to thicken, indicating it is performing increased work to pump blood through the lungs. Research has demonstrated that increases in the relative weight of the right ventricle are directly correlated with increases in blood pressure in the arteries leading to the lungs (pulmonary arteries). In addition, recent experiments have shown that elevations in pulmonary arterial pressure can cause blood to flow so rapidly through the lungs of healthy broilers that insufficient time elapses for adequate oxygen uptake. This rapid blood flow causes blood oxygen levels to gradually decline in affected broilers which can be detected visually as a slight darkening of the normally bright red comb and wattles. Pulmonary edema also may contribute to reduced blood oxygenation as pulmonary hypertension progresses.

After initially thickening, the wall of the right ventricle then begins to stretch and enlarge. This enlargement indicates that in spite having increased the pulmonary arterial pressure, the right ventricle still cannot pump all of the blood through the lungs. The volume within the right ventricle must increase when an excessive amount of blood remains within the pumping chamber at the completion of contraction. This enlargement physically reduces the pumping efficiency of the right ventricle, and extensive enlargement may prevent the valve between the right atrium and right ventricle from sealing properly, allowing blood to regurgitate back into the right atrium during each ventricular contraction.

The reduced blood oxygen levels accompanying pulmonary hypertension may contribute to a generalized weakening of heart muscle. These events mark the beginning of right-sided congestive heart failure, which is characterized by the engorging of veins throughout the body with blood that cannot be efficiently pumped through the lungs. The accumulated blood congests the blood channels within the liver and causes plasma leakage through the surface of the liver. This plasma is the source of the fluid which accumulates in the abdominal cavity and eventually kills the bird by compressing the abdominal air sacs so that respiration can not occur. As the syndrome enters its terminal stages, large reductions in blood oxygen cause the comb and wattles of affected broilers to exhibit a dark blue “cyanotic” appearance.​

 

[allymeagan]

Thanks for the info! They're about sixteen weeks or so. I'm doing the rest up tomorrow.