vivian

This chicken died suddenly last night (pic from a post about 3 years ago):



She had been unusually subdued, lethargic even. Francie was worried that she might be egg-bound, so brought her inside for a warm hip-bath and abdominal massage, and produced a strange object from her vent (more about that below). We set up a cage in the office, and she seemed to be resting peacefully, until she suddenly pitched over on her face, thrashed violently a couple of times, and died. Just like that.

So here's the object extracted from the chicken's butt: ( cut for the squeamish, though it's more odd than squicky )

It's a hard mass of tissue, about an inch long, with a large piece of tough, dry, folded membrane protruding from one end. There's no blood, and no connective tissue - this thing came out entire.

I suppose it's vaguely possible that it was a developing egg, but it's unlike any egg I've ever seen. Also, she was laying as recently as the day before she died, so I'm not convinced that it was egg binding.

The consistency of the object is more like a tumor, but do tumors ever just detach and flush themselves out of the system?

Maybe a bezoar? I'm completely at a loss to explain this thing.

Here it is with the membrane unfolded a bit: ( again, cut )