Necropsy Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

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Jaye
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by Jaye » Sat Apr 27, 2019 6:40 pm

:iagree: I think that it's probably something out in your yard too. That extra fat I think is a red herring.
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by Ontario Chick » Sat Apr 27, 2019 6:51 pm

Badstart wrote:
Sat Apr 27, 2019 5:05 pm
labradors wrote:
Sat Apr 27, 2019 3:28 pm
This might be of interest: https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poultry/ ... in-poultry
Thank you very much for that! Interestingly enough thats the very article I read out loud to my wife a couple of days ago that had me thinking it was Fatty Liver in the beginning. The internet can be a wonderful aid but I won't rely on it as a Vet should be the one to make this call; specially as to what I have to do. Fortunately I started early and I have 10 pullets and what ever comes out of my Hovabator in a week to recoup our losses.
I am glad you are going to have a testing done, Wyandottes are pretty resilient birds and any one of the things that seem to appear on the picture aren't very likely to kill them, so here is hoping for a clear diagnoses.

I may have some fertile eggs available by the time you are ready to fire up your new incubator, if you needed.
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by Killerbunny » Sat Apr 27, 2019 7:24 pm

I lost a Wyandotte a few weeks ago too. She was fat as butter and apparently no issues. On checking she had a broken neck.
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Happy
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by Happy » Sat Apr 27, 2019 7:36 pm

Is there any chance they got into rodent poison? Struggling to breathe and internal bleeding really makes me think poison although I'm sure there's other reasons for those symptoms as well. Even if nothing on your property can they venture into a neighbor's? Or sneak into your garage or shed?
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by kenya » Sat Apr 27, 2019 8:27 pm

I'm sorry you are having problems but that does seem like a lot of fat, I do feel we tend to overfeed but they usually are fine. I never cut mine open I just, well I , ah just can't do it. Good for you able to do it. I wish someone on here could tell you whats wrong. The fact more than one and just recently does not seem like fatty liver I too think its somethink they are eating unless you are hearing some laboured breathing which then would say a respiratory disease.
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by WLLady » Sat Apr 27, 2019 11:42 pm

I'm really sorry to hear of the losses!!! so i'm not an expert but i'm not seeing anything consistent with warfarin poisoning. but the blue block rat poison is not warfarin...and thus i couldn't rule that out. HOWEVER that liver is awfully yellow/orange!!! my bet is flhs, otherwise known as fatty liver disease. it seems to have environmental, genetic and behavioural aspects.....first suspect is feed...if the hens were on grower or chick feed it could have too much fat and not enough protiein for them. if they are fed back hard boiled egg a lot, or a lot of sunflower seeds along with high calorie treats....if they are older birds too that can help them be susceptible to developing it. the fact that it's more than 1 chicken leads me to think the food may be too rich....either too low in protein or too high in fat.
death usually happens because the liver ruptures, or the blood flow through the liver is so slowed by the fat accumulation. the colour of the liver is generally the giveaway. now that the weather is warming up, and it's been up and down this is a really stressful time for the birds, and going from warm to cold and laying again after winter can add to that stress. so. my bet is fatty liver disease. again, i'm sorry for your losses.
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Reboot
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by Reboot » Sun Apr 28, 2019 9:53 am

[/quote]I may have some fertile eggs available by the time you are ready to fire up your new incubator, if you needed.
[/quote]
That is very kind of you, thank you very much from both my wife and I. I may have to take you up on that otherwise its a 8 hour drive to our breeders (good people) for more pullets and, oh my goodness its 'badstart' all over again!!! LOL if they will even sell to me again. I have to confess it is discouraging to keep screwing up at this scale. I had a couple of dozen eggs that were supposed to sell this weekend but I cancelled the sale, and set them out for the incubator and pulled our "eggs for sale" road sign down. I'll eat our eggs but I'm not selling them to the public until I know what this is. The hens gave us 6 eggs yesterday along with the 2 dozen in the fridge so unless I lose more birds I should have enough eggs for the new Brinsea 56EX over the next few days. So far over, 3 hatches with that Hovabator, I am running at a 10% hatch success; with the last batch resulting in no chicks so pressure is on. I guess that will be insult to injury getting a high end incubator just as my flock disappears. I know this is just peanuts to real farmers but it certainly makes me appreciate what my extended farmer family must have had to deal with working a real multi million dollar dairy operation. The simplest mistake can cost everything. To my defense I am starting from scratch and they grew up on that farm over several generations so someone taught them. I have a few books and you folks!
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Reboot
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by Reboot » Sun Apr 28, 2019 10:00 am

Happy wrote:
Sat Apr 27, 2019 7:36 pm
can they venture into a neighbor's? Or sneak into your garage or shed?
Yes on both accounts. We were infested with mice last year so I had bait stations in the house with the little bait blocks but nothing outside. Early last spring I found a tiny piece of a bait cube under our deck so the little buggers were dragging the stuff outside. That was over a year ago and that area is exposed to rain and an unknown multitude of mice so logic suggests to me if there was anything out there it would have been degraded or ingested long before these birds went free range. I didn't use any of that bait at all since last year. Its all just guess work on my part which is why we are going to the professionals in an effort to save the remaining birds if we even can at this point.
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by labradors » Sun Apr 28, 2019 11:47 am

Just wondering if you have close neighbours that use rat poison. It's also possible that an infected mouse made its way to where the chickens are hanging out and they ate it...….

The rat poison does go off (fortunately for me). Friends were babysitting our two Labradors one day when one of them must have gone into an old barn and eaten some of the bait. The first I knew of it was after she got home and pooped that fluorescent green! My Lab was perfectly ok, and when I asked my friend what she could possibly have eaten, she remembered some old boxes of rat poison in the barn?!?!?!
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Happy
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Re: Fatty Liver Disease? (graphic post mortem images warning)

Post by Happy » Sun Apr 28, 2019 12:02 pm

I certainly don’t know what I’m looking at with your post mortem pics. My suggestion is purely based on your anecdotal evidence. Your birds may very well have an underlying illness and I would not know based on your photos. I just think 3 birds in 3 days sounds much more like something environmental when you have just released them to free range. One way or the other I hope that’s the end of your losses and you can get to the bottom of it.
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