Hello all, I am hoping some of you more experienced chicken keepers can help me figure out what killed my hen. We have a flock of 25 hens and 1 rooster, varying ages and breeds. The bird in question was a 4 year old Silver-Laced Wyandotte.
She has been lethargic, tail down, not foraging as much as the others for a few days. Today she was just standing in one place and put up no resistance when I picked her up. I could feel her abdomen was very swollen. So we euthanized her today and I opened her up.
Now, in that past 4 months we have lost 2 hens with swollen bellies. I did a necropsy on the second, and she was filled with yellow fluid (ascites). So -I was really worried that this hen had ascites too, and we were looking at a flock-wide problem.
However, when I opened her up there was no yellow fluid. Instead there were all these.... eggs? I'm assuming these are undeveloped eggs? I've been scouring online, but all the other photos I have seen show the internal eggs as a yolk-yellow. All of these were filled with clear fluid, and there had to be thousands? some tiny, some enormous. I could barely find her other organs for the amount of these things in the way. Intestines looked normal, liver was normal, and I didn't get any further than that because it was pretty clear what was causing her problem. Is this a disease? Genetic condition? Do I need to worry about the other Silver Laced Wyandotte?
Any insight that can be offered would be appreciated!
She has been lethargic, tail down, not foraging as much as the others for a few days. Today she was just standing in one place and put up no resistance when I picked her up. I could feel her abdomen was very swollen. So we euthanized her today and I opened her up.
Now, in that past 4 months we have lost 2 hens with swollen bellies. I did a necropsy on the second, and she was filled with yellow fluid (ascites). So -I was really worried that this hen had ascites too, and we were looking at a flock-wide problem.
However, when I opened her up there was no yellow fluid. Instead there were all these.... eggs? I'm assuming these are undeveloped eggs? I've been scouring online, but all the other photos I have seen show the internal eggs as a yolk-yellow. All of these were filled with clear fluid, and there had to be thousands? some tiny, some enormous. I could barely find her other organs for the amount of these things in the way. Intestines looked normal, liver was normal, and I didn't get any further than that because it was pretty clear what was causing her problem. Is this a disease? Genetic condition? Do I need to worry about the other Silver Laced Wyandotte?
Any insight that can be offered would be appreciated!
