Two post mortems (necropsies) in two days..... WARNING GRAPHIC PHOTOS

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casportpony said:
I am so sorry for your losses:hugs

Are all of the pictures from your cochin? The friable liver would make me suspicious of fatty liver too. One thing that caught my eye was the color of the intestines... Parts seem to dark, and other parts look too red.

Again, sorry for your losses.
Click to expand...

Yes these are all the bantam cochin.... I'm having difficulty downloading photos of the other bird, which are way more interesting, at the moment, but will figure it out when I have more time. The discolouration may be a distortion of the light due to the background green and doing the PM in bright sunlight. It didn't strike me as being particularly discoloured but it was performed several days after her death and she wasn't refrigerated.... not overly hot here, so it wasn't unpleasant doing the PM even after that time. Also, she was broody which obviously slows down the digestive system and may well lead to change in colour and consistency as well as smell. I was a little concerned about the discoloured/bruised skin below her vent anatomically (above her vent in the photos) but it didn't appear to be anything untoward I actually felt that her gut looked pretty healthy. There was a huge clot of blood in her heart and the blood vessels through her liver were clearly engorged with blood and easy to see when the surrounding tissue broke apart with handling, which was not something I had seen before and part of her liver was actually stuck to her rib cage when I lifted it away. Obviously the blood had clotted and congealed since death, so I am not saying the clot in her heart had caused her death but my feeling was that the chamber was enlarged beyond the norm for such a small hen. You can see the clot of blood protruding from the heart just left of centre in the fourth photo.
I was however expecting her liver to have that toffee colour and be greasy as you see with fatty liver and it wasn't. I do know that my brother who lives next door has been giving them scraps occasionally.... pizza and pastry crusts it turns out.... but did not realise the extent of that until the coop was unoccupied (my brother didn't know they were gone) and I found a significant pile of crusts that would constitute nearly a whole day's food for a banty, so that also points to it being Fatty Liver Disease. Brother has been asked not to feed them in the future... a sad lesson to learn and one I am aware of and should have prevented.
 
Shadrach said:
:hugs
Thanks for the necropsy pictures,
What will you do with the bantam Pekin's husband? Here they don't take well to the loss of a long term partner if they are getting on and don't have children.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sympathies. He stayed with her until I remove her body for PM and then he went exploring and found the banty pen in the back garden and muscled in with them. He and the lavender pekin cock bird in charge there have battled it out over a series of days and whilst he looks to have lost, he is keeping a watchful eye over the broody that is now hatching his dead partner's hatching eggs..... They both (he and the hen) seem to be pretty happy with this arrangement but I may remove the other male at some point because the bereaved one is by far my favourite.
 

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