Are these tumors? Is this safe for us to eat? Can I at least make chicken stock with it? Obviously this was all discarded when gutting it, but it makes me nervous. I’m breastfeeding a 7 week old baby so am more cautious than I otherwise might be.
by MissDriftless
21 Comments
are they not eggs?
Always good to be cautious. To me, these looked like unlaid eggs. Should be alarming if this was a rooster.
Those are young eggs.. They can also go in the Gumbo, lol
Sorry you had to slaughter a laying hen
Gut balloons!!
Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure
Those are future eggs. Few people notice because most people kill off their chickens before maturity. By 6 months, plus or minus a month, hens will have probably half a dozen eggs in various stages, in the queue, so to speak.
Immature eggs. You can eat them or feed them to your other chickens with the rest of the guts.
Check them for drugs. That hen may be mule.
Everyone saying these are unlaid eggs are wrong. Developing eggs just look like egg yolks of various sizes. You might get one that has the white around it and no shell yet, but nothing like this.
I think, if I follow the lower left corner of the picture up, it looks like these are bubbles in the intestines. Is that correct? Were they full of air or fluid? What was the last 24 hours of the chicken’s life before you slaughtered with respect to what they had available for food and water? How long did it sit after dispatching and prior to gutting?
My guess is either it started to decompose and bloat between death to gutting, or the chicken was gulping a lot of air/water when restricted from food, or the chicken ate something really bad for it that gave it gas. Or a combination of the above.
EDIT: I did find one instance online of a chicken whose unlaid eggs looked like this. That chicken was nearly bald from feather loss from forced molting. You can see it [here](https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/13/1/89). Normal unlaid eggs are next to it. So if your chicken was molting or ill, then I guess they could be eggs after all.
OP those are NOT developing eggs. Not sure what it is, but it ain’t that!!
Google “undeveloped eggs in chicken carcass” and you’ll see what I mean.
Eggs in the hen look like yolks of varying sizes
I’m spamming these comments because any time I see gas build up like that, I think of bacterial growth and decomposition. It annoys me that so many people are so confident putting OPs health at risk without knowing what the hell they are talking about.
Those look like tumors.
They are eggs undeveloped, but… these birds lack grass and sunlight ? Very pale
OP do not listen to everyone calling these unlaid eggs. Unlaid eggs do not look like bubbles, they look like egg yokes without shells, they are not empty or translucent like this photo. That looks a lot more like gas buildup from bacterial decomposition. Please at least do an image search on unlaid eggs and you’ll see for yourself or consult your local butcher. But do not eat these just because some amateurs on the internet told you they were safe. They do not know what they are talking about. They are wrong, and most likely they are a sign that this meat is not safe to eat. Just do a double check with someone whose experience you can verify and don’t take risks with your health because some internet strangers told you it was safe.
They look like worm bubbles for lack of a better word, remember seeing a gnarly case of this in a person on Youtube, lemme find it
https://youtu.be/rhz1QR6mcTw?feature=shared
Swim bladders. Must be chicken of the sea.
I would not eat. Looks like decomposition or disease.
I would eat it but I’m not breastfeeding. Feed it to someone who can afford to get sick lol.
If you can afford it, I would consider tossing this carcass. I can’t be certain unless I had more detailed necropsy, but there is a type of parasite that causes these fluid filled cysts. Other options include it being benign tumors or cysts, but since the parasite I mentioned is contagious to humans, I would get rid of the carcass instead of risking it.
Personally I would just pass on the whole thing lol
Cancer polyps