After 8 years of keeping peafowl, we had our first loss today. It was sudden and a bit of a shock. He was just 2 years old, one of the ten peachicks I posted a lot about when they hatched 2 years ago.
We watch the birds so closely every day and never saw anything wrong so I feel awful for missing this. The first sign of anything unusual was last night when my husband saw one peacock sleeping in one of the peahens' nest boxes instead of up on the roost. He decided to wait until this morning to tell me but we checked on the peacock first thing.
He was up and about with the others but clearly not ok. He was having trouble walking and even fell over at one point. We immediately isolated him and checked him over. We checked his crop and body condition and examined him thoroughly externally for injuries and couldn't find any. There was no sign of sickness. He was so alert and bright eyed, outwardly healthy looking. He seemed to be more weak than anything, like his legs didn't have any energy. His legs did feel a bit thin but he had plenty of bodyweight around the breast. He was unusually easy to handle so we knew he must be feeling quite unwell.
He didn't show any interest in food and I was prepared to potentially tube feed him. I wanted to give him a chance to eat on his own first and I also wanted to get a look at his his droppings to see if we should medicate him as well so we decided to leave him for a short while. We left him with some multivitamins in his water and some bowls of various types of food to see which treats he would eat, if any, and to come back again to weigh him, check his droppings and tube feed him if he hadn't eaten anything by then. When we came back less than a couple of hours later, he was dead.
There are no symptoms among any of the others. We did lose a chicken last week but they are in completely different parts of the land and her necropsy seemed to indicate internal laying so I'm hoping we're not looking at a contagious disease.
My husband did the necropsy alone so please excuse the mess and lack of clear photos of each organ. We are also very inexperienced (two chicken necropsies and no previous peafowl ones) so we're still learning what looks normal or abnormal. I'm guessing the pool of green liquid is not right? It was coming from the ceca.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it. I'm keen to learn as much as I can.
1. The breastbone - my husband thought it looked oddly knobbly compared to a chicken but we don't know if that's normal for peafowl.
2. The organs before being removed
3.
4.
5. The contents of the crop
6. The contents of the gizzard. The shiny thing is a large piece of shell. And the feather wasn't in there, it just fell among the mess.
7.
We watch the birds so closely every day and never saw anything wrong so I feel awful for missing this. The first sign of anything unusual was last night when my husband saw one peacock sleeping in one of the peahens' nest boxes instead of up on the roost. He decided to wait until this morning to tell me but we checked on the peacock first thing.
He was up and about with the others but clearly not ok. He was having trouble walking and even fell over at one point. We immediately isolated him and checked him over. We checked his crop and body condition and examined him thoroughly externally for injuries and couldn't find any. There was no sign of sickness. He was so alert and bright eyed, outwardly healthy looking. He seemed to be more weak than anything, like his legs didn't have any energy. His legs did feel a bit thin but he had plenty of bodyweight around the breast. He was unusually easy to handle so we knew he must be feeling quite unwell.
He didn't show any interest in food and I was prepared to potentially tube feed him. I wanted to give him a chance to eat on his own first and I also wanted to get a look at his his droppings to see if we should medicate him as well so we decided to leave him for a short while. We left him with some multivitamins in his water and some bowls of various types of food to see which treats he would eat, if any, and to come back again to weigh him, check his droppings and tube feed him if he hadn't eaten anything by then. When we came back less than a couple of hours later, he was dead.
There are no symptoms among any of the others. We did lose a chicken last week but they are in completely different parts of the land and her necropsy seemed to indicate internal laying so I'm hoping we're not looking at a contagious disease.
My husband did the necropsy alone so please excuse the mess and lack of clear photos of each organ. We are also very inexperienced (two chicken necropsies and no previous peafowl ones) so we're still learning what looks normal or abnormal. I'm guessing the pool of green liquid is not right? It was coming from the ceca.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it. I'm keen to learn as much as I can.
1. The breastbone - my husband thought it looked oddly knobbly compared to a chicken but we don't know if that's normal for peafowl.
2. The organs before being removed
3.
4.
5. The contents of the crop
6. The contents of the gizzard. The shiny thing is a large piece of shell. And the feather wasn't in there, it just fell among the mess.
7.
