I had to butcher one of my BBW today unexpectedly. He had developed a hernia a few months back but appeared to be in no pain and ate enough to make me swear he had worms which he didn't. Anyway his hernia burst today so I quickly took care of him. When I pulled out his heart I was surprised to find it in a white sac that looked much like the inside of a gizzard with out the ridges, or if youv'e ever cut a heat apart and seen the white lining inside that would be it. There were four ventricles coming out of it. Which really threw me for a loop. I've never seen anything like this, so I called my poultry experts (Mom and Dad) and they haven't seen or heard of it either. So my question is have any of you ever seen this? Tall Tommy was hugh. His back was higher than any of the other toms heads. He ate like three toms put together. The other things I noticed was his liver was extremely green on the outside. I disected and it appeared normal, but was very large. His gizzard was the largest I have ever seen. My Dad has hugh hands and TT's gizzard would have been bigger. His kidneys had what I at first thought was worms on them. I think it may have been fat deposits though I'm still not sure. Everything else checked out as normal or in that range and I didn't have any real time to examine everything more in depth as my main goal was to save the meat and get it chilled. I generally raise 20 to 25 turkeys a year and grew up doing more, so in my 48 years I've seen a fair amount of inards. I have never seen the things I saw today. Any ideas as to what was going on? Curious to see if anyone else has seen this before.
