... her liver exploded due to eating too many sunflower seeds! A treat I feed them every day. Ayayay. The seeds are too fatty and they can't handle it.
How sad. So sorry.
According to the avian pathologist (? - I guess I don't know what kind of animal or avian medical professional did the autopsy), how many sunflower seeds are too many?
If it's a fat issue, then I guess we'd sorta need to know how much fat per day he/she thinks is too much for a layer based on her weight because chickens get fats/oils from other sources, too, not just sunflower seeds, so it would be the amount of fat from all sources that would have caused this hen's death, right? So imagine he/she asked you about that.
Were the sunflower seeds in the shell? Were they black oil sunflower seeds? Or were they unshelled sunflower seeds? Or which kind?
Also, was your hen confined in a coop/run set up or was she in a free range set up? If free range, how many acres did she have available to range? And what were her choices for foraging? Was her coop heated or unheated? What are the night time lows where this hen lived?
Also how were the sunflower seeds fed? Tossed? In a feeder in front of her continually? Did you have complete feed available at all times? Did you have grit available at all times? What other options were available to your hens? Did you feed them twice daily? Other kitchen scraps?
My chickens get sunflower seeds in their complete feed at 4#/100#, except when we have had some supply issues on other items in our homemade feed and I've sometimes subbed ground black oil sunflower seeds, etc., judiciously until supply issues abated.
I'd really not like any of my hens to die from exploding liver. I've looked into "fatty liver disease" and am aware of it, but "exploding liver" is new to me and it sounds just terrible.
So the only thing this autopsy person told you was to feed fewer sunflower seeds? They didn't give you any other guidelines?
I am just trying to figure out if there is anything I can learn from your experience that I should apply to my hens because "feed fewer sunflower seeds" is not detailed enough for me to apply to the hens I've got. Maybe I'm already feeding few enough. (?) No way of knowing.