Fatty Liver
Silent killer
I will go thrue a common disease in poultry that aint spoken about that much. Many of sudden death comes from this condition, this is Fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome. This condition came to me when a fellow member shared the autopsy result of her hen.
Other casues like genetic, hormonal or envorimental factors could also speed up the fat builed up.
Mycotoxins have also been showed as a cause in this syndrome.
Most often you dont know that your chicken are suffering from this condition. One day it will just drop dead.
- Overweight, lack of breastbone.
- A pale comb
- Reduced egglaying
- Lethargic
- Reduced apitite
- Dehydration
- Diarrhea
- Monitor the body condition of your bird. How well in shape your bird often is determined by how well you can feel the breastbone. Can you not feel the breastbone? This means your bird is overweight.
- Monitior the feed intake of your bird. What type of feed do you give your bird? Is it suited for your birds needs? Study the diffrent table of contens in your feeds (this includes if you mix your own with grains).
- A small amount selenium togheter with vitamin E is shown to help against fatty liver syndrome.
- Diffrent products like fish meals, distillers grains and alfalfa meal have shown to reduce the progression of fatty liver syndrom.
A woman confused after her precious hen died without reason. She sent her for an autopsy which showed a hemorrhage due to fatty liver syndrom.
She gave them free acess to layer feed, supplementing with a small amount of grains.
Veggies is given on a regular basis.
She rarley gave them treats and they have a huge run where they could walk around all day.
Many people have their chickens in runs all day long, with a much smaller size of their run.
She came to me and ask to write about this topic to spread awareness. Thanks to her post I actully switch around the feed for my birds and really tought hardly what they actully need. My waterfowl feed for example had way to much protein.
Based on what she told me I do believe something else was in the deep roots of her hens fatty liver. It shows that this can happen to the best of us even if we do it right.
I thank her for sharing her story!
After this syndrome came to my mind I have been really thinking alot about it. Could any of my birds have it and suddenly drop dead?
We all like to spoil our pets. Knowing that we think we do everything right and still something like this could happend.
This is for surley one of the most common causes of sudden death in chickens. Many dont send their birds for autopsy so the numbers could be even higher.
My own speculation reading that estorgen affects the amount of fat to the liver: could this be a higher problem in higher producing breeds? and the ones that dont lay that often, could it be a less of an issue?