Turkey with strange dark bloody goop inside when harvested

[Rickoxo]

I've been raising turkeys, ducks and chickens for a bunch of years and had just harvested a nice 40 lb white male turkey. The story was a bit strange, it had been the big bird in the flock, the other male was submissive and no problem, then I come out one day and this guy is laying on the ground barely moving and one of the females was pecking at his head. I put it in a seperate room to see if it lived through the night and to clean out food tract and butchered it the next morning. The butchering seemed totally normal, carcass looked fine, it was very large pretty quickly (40 lbs in just under six months) but it wasn't lopsided, no visible protrusions, nothing like that.

Fortunately he was too large to roast in our roasting pan and when we get large birds we grind up the breasts for sausage so as I was cutting this guy into parts, the first leg/thigh came off fine, looked totally perfect. The second one, however, looked nasty. It was dark, bloody, and there was all sorts of cottage cheese looking black curds in and around the leg. As I tried to bed them thigh back to cut it off, the leg snapped in the middle.

The rest of the bird seemed fine, the dark bloody area was mainly around the leg/thigh on one side. But it was a large area.

1. Does anyone know what this is?
2. Is the rest of this bird safe to eat (I have it salted right now, waiting in the fridge)?
3. Is this any kind of disease I need to think about for the rest of my birds (3 more turkeys, 15 ducks, 6 chickens)?

Thanks for any help,

Rick

 

[Alicia G]

It kinda looks like a massive blood clot.

 

[HorseFeatherz NV]

Does look to me like a large hematoma.

Was this leg on the side he was laying when you found him?

 

[CMV]

Was his leg broken? It looks like a large clot. I am wondering if he broke his leg shortly before butcher. Bones bleed like crazy when fractured, especially large bones. When you said the leg snapped in the middle- were you talking about the middle of the femur or along the joint in the knee?

I wouldn't eat the leg of the bird (unless you mixed it in with the sausage), but the rest of the bird is likely to be fine if it was just a fracture.

 

[Momo]

Yep, looks like a blood clot / trauma.

 

[Rickoxo]

As far as I can tell, the leg wasn't broken before I was butchering/cleaning. I don't remember what side he was laying on, and while much of the blood did seem to be outside the meat and I could clean it off, the thigh had some seriously dark parts and parts of the meat were infused with the blood. I threw that away, but the rest of the meat, the breasts, the other leg, the wings and the back all seem fine with no discoloration whatsoever.

Just want to make sure I'm not eating cancer or anything

 

[JP33]

Looks like the bird was injured and bled internally around/in that leg. Hard to tell for sure over the internet though. Did you happen to take a whiff of the leg?

Fresh meat generally has no odor, so if it had an odor I would steer clear.


...JP

 

[Rickoxo]

No odor at all, I got my nose right in there. We just ate soup from the carcass and the carcass meat and I'm not dead yet, so, so far so good. I finally decided to use the smell/visual/feel test and since in every way all the other parts smelled, looked and felt just like normal, I'm calling it an injury with some serious internal bleeding. If anyone knows differently, it's not all eaten yet (40 lbs will take us a while

Thanks for all the help,

Rick

 

[Rickoxo]

Well, based partly on feedback from here and partly on my best guess and partly on a desire not to throw out 40 lbs of meat, we ended up eating the bird. We've been eating turkey for the last week or so, we roasted the leg and thigh that weren't discolored, ground up the breasts, made soup from the carcass, and no ill effects anyone can tell. It's only case, but working backwards from having eaten the bird and having no problems, it's seeming like whatever that was was mostly benign? I'm still waiting for the urgent e-mail telling me to rush my family to the hospital, but next time anyone sees anything like this, we lived through it

Thanks,

Rick

 

[silkiechicken]

Looks like an injury and a big blood clot. You're safe.