First chicken necropsy - surprisingly easy, and worth doing

We had our third chicken die in three weeks, from three different causes. The first two were obvious (predator, and a prolapse) but the one yesterday was not. She was not looking good 48 hours ago - hunched on the floor, not moving, at bed time. We brought her into the house in the dog crate, and checked the obvious. She was not egg bound, had a soft crop, passes some very watery poo and wasn't eating or drinking. Then in the morning she had died.

I wanted to be sure of the cause of death, in case it was contagious and we needed to be concerned about the rest of the flock.

I watched a couple of youtube videos which gave me an idea of what to look out for. I was able to check heart, lungs, reproductive system, digestive tract from top to bottom, trachea etc... All of those were clear, with the exception of the gizzard which was completely impacted with plant matter. It looks like she picked up lots of grass clippings when out free ranging, and her digestive system was completely blocked up. No evidence of disease or parasites of any kind, which is reassuring for the health of the rest of the flock.

I guess my point is that I was a bit apprehensive of doing this, but it was actually pretty easy to do, and gave me a lot of useful information about both the chicken that died and the rest of the flock.

Glad to hear it! One of my more experienced homesteading friends helped me do a necropsy on my first chicken who died. Turned out she had thick, yellow fat deposits completely filling up her body cavity, to the point of squishing her organs around. May have been a severe imbalance of hormones or something like that? But like you said, I learned a lot and it was reassuring to know that the problem was just with that individual chicken, and the rest of the flock was safe. Since then I've been doing necropsies as needed on my own. It's empowering and informative.

I do necropsies on and off depending on time and concerns. I absolutely encourage people to not only do them at least a few times so you see what your animals look like on the inside, as well as to learn what "normal" looks like.  The impacted crop that was mentioned may be a sign you need to get some actual grit and not just count on the birds picking up enough stones to keep their crops working. Or consider keeping birds off land with machine cut grass clipping on top and have them on grass that they have to cut for you, so they get smaller bits.

That said, I found a beloved goose dead yesterday morning - she'd acted unwell the night before - and I'm going to find a nice place to plant her where she'll help nourish the soil, and I'm *not* going to cut her up.  Don't feel as if you *have* to do this every time!

Juniper Zen wrote: She had thick, yellow fat deposits completely filling up her body cavity.

I had a chicken acting "off" and when I went to examine her, she died while I had her flipped over. I think feeling bad about it helped spur me to do my first necropsy where I found exactly what you described. And for the life of me I can't remember the name for this phenomena! But it did help me greatly when another layer had the same issues a year later. On that one I didn't have to do the necropsy because I already pretty well knew (after monitoring for external symptoms before she died.) Both were Rhode Island Reds.

And speaking more generally, YES! This is something every chicken keeper should do at least once. That and develop a check list of what to look for externally first as soon as you see a bird is not quite acting right.

Re my chicken with the impacted gizzard:

Their main feed has a grit in it, they free range, and have supplementary grit freely available in their coop. Hence I suspect that she gorged on the clippings.