Death and Necropsy

I checked on my patridge Tuesday morning, and she had managed to get herself into the henhouse part of the time out coop, but she was still laying on her side and looked very ill.

I had to run some errands, and when I came home around 2pm, I checked on her again, and found that she had passed away.

Since this was the second chicken death inside a week, and the third out of ordinary event, I decided to have a necropsy done on her.  Utah State University has a couple facilities that do this. One is located in Logan, the other in Nephi.  Although it was incredibly inconvenient, I decided to drive her up to Logan and have a necropsy done.

I've been in a panic, worrying that it's Mareks, and that I was going to be having a leper colony/death camp on my hands.

When I got there, the vet came out to talk to me about the whole thing. On the intake paper, there was a little line for background info, and I was not sure how to fit everything there. Luckily I was able to verbally tell the vet everything.  She wasn't going to give a definitive answer without examining the bird, but she indicated that she thought I'd just had a run of bad luck, and it probably was not mareks or any other infectious disease.  Even though it was 4:30pm by the time I got there, she said they'd get to work on the chicken the next morning (this morning).

I heard back from her by 10:00am. Amazingly fast results!  This is what her email said:

the chicken died of chronic yolk peritonitis ( this was going on for days to over a week). There is a mass on the ovary, could be an infection, but more likely a tumor. I will have slides Friday and know more then as to specifically what the mass is, but this is not a flock health issue, so at this point, nothing to worry about with the others. Not an infectious disease. I will let you know more Friday afternoon. Email or call me if you have any questions. Incidentally, there is no evidence of Merek’s disease in this bird.

Dr. R

I am so relieved!