Rooster with growth on neck

[virtualanne]

My rooster is about 3 years old. He has a large growth on the side of his neck that has been there for over a year, and has gotten quite large - about the size of a tennis ball. His crow has always sounded kind of sickly... it reminds me of a pre-pubescent boy - kind of breaking up at the end.

He seems fairly healthy aside from this (although I noticed that he has a horrible infestation of mites or fleas or something, and I am treating him for that. I looked at the list of diseases on the Poultry Site and didn't see anything like this.

A few of the hens in his flock have died for no apparent reason - no visible signs of injury or illness - I just found them dead one day. The last one died about 6 or 8 months ago, and I think it was a total of about 3 of them, so I don't know if this is related at all to what is going on with him.

Anyone have any ideas?

- Anne

 

[BantamLover21]

It sounds like he could have some sort of tumor--unfortunately, I don't think there is any treatment for that. Do you know if your chickens were ever vaccinated for Marek's Disease? Some more common symptoms of Marek's include both internal and external tumors/growths, paraylisis, nervous system signs, greyish and irregular shaped pupils, and enlargement of feather follicles. But there are many other signs, too, as Marek's can manifest itself in so many ways! It is possible that your chickens that died suddenly had internal tumors that finally killed them.

Here is a thread on a similar topic: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...in-neck-possible-tumor-thymus-response-mareks