Weird chicken skin problem

Put down a lethargic broiler that seemed to have a leg issue.  After plucking there was a patch of skin on the back that looks weird.  See pictures.  What is the cause, and is it still safe to cook and eat?  If not human safe is it ok for dog food?

was it missing feathers in that area before?
is the breed got any skin color genes?

as the bird had some kind of problem and now you see this , I would not eat it.
until I knew for sure it was safe to do so.

How's the liver looking?  That's the first thing I'd check.  That is very strange though. From the photo it looks like it's calloused skin.  How was the bird's mite load when you plucked?

Breed was Freedom Ranger broilers.  No missing feathers or anything else apparently wrong with that area before plucking.  Didn't notice any mite problems but I wasn't looking either.  Liver was totally normal (I did check that pretty closely).

Another person thought it could be a partly healed bruise.  The chickens did have a tendency to trample each other during feeding time.  If it was a turkey that trampled him especially that could be the problem.

Andrew Mayflower wrote:Breed was Freedom Ranger broilers.  No missing feathers or anything else apparently wrong with that area before plucking.  Didn't notice any mite problems but I wasn't looking either.  Liver was totally normal (I did check that pretty closely).

Another person thought it could be a partly healed bruise.  The chickens did have a tendency to trample each other during feeding time.  If it was a turkey that trampled him especially that could be the problem.

Bruise would be my second guess.  I don't know if you still hve the bird, but if it were me, I'd just skin it (or that portion of it) and check the meat out.  If the meat isn't bruise or off-color I'd call it good.  It obviously nothing infected though, it's not going to risk making anyone sick, it might just not taste very good if there's old blood sitting in the skin or meat.

We had small bits like that on our muscovy ducks, does it peel off? it did on them, I put it down to old skin that hadn't totally come off yet.

Jen Fan wrote:

Andrew Mayflower wrote:Breed was Freedom Ranger broilers.  No missing feathers or anything else apparently wrong with that area before plucking.  Didn't notice any mite problems but I wasn't looking either.  Liver was totally normal (I did check that pretty closely).

Another person thought it could be a partly healed bruise.  The chickens did have a tendency to trample each other during feeding time.  If it was a turkey that trampled him especially that could be the problem.

Bruise would be my second guess.  I don't know if you still hve the bird, but if it were me, I'd just skin it (or that portion of it) and check the meat out.  If the meat isn't bruise or off-color I'd call it good.  It obviously nothing infected though, it's not going to risk making anyone sick, it might just not taste very good if there's old blood sitting in the skin or meat.

Meat wasn't bruised, though the underside of the skin in that location did look a little darker/bruised.  Some of that yellowish stuff did peel off, but a lot of it wouldn't without tearing away big chunks of the underlying skin.  I did remove that portion of the skin and discarded it.

I wound up parting that chicken out, and then froze it as I didn't have much opportunity to do anything else with it.  I'll probably thaw if for dinner tonight.  

I seen this last fall on a couple chickens and turkeys.  We were over whelmed with rain.  We had penned them up using the deep litter method and got a lice infestation.  The meat was fine for us.