At the 2024 Western Poultry Disease Conference, Carlos Daniel Gornatti-Churria and his team from the California Animal Health & Food Safety Laboratory (CAHFS) at the University of California-Davis presented their findings on salt toxicity cases in chickens. The researchers diagnosed a total of 66 commercial and backyard chickens from seven separate salt toxicity incidents based on necropsy submissions to the CAHFS Systemwide.
The affected chickens exhibited a range of symptoms, including increased mortality, inability to stand or walk, and abdominal turgidity. Necropsy results revealed several consistent lesions among the cases: ascites (in 6 out of 7 cases), anasarca (4 out of 7), hydropericardium or cardiomegaly (7 out of 7), edematous congested lungs (6 out of 7), swollen and cystic testes (6 out of 7), and pale enlarged kidneys (6 out of 7).
Microscopic examination showed compatible findings in the cerebrum, heart, lungs, kidneys, and testes. A significant observation was that most of the analyzed brains (19 out of 24) had sodium levels below 1,800 ppm, with values ranging from 1,300 ppm to 1,700 ppm.
Feed samples from the affected flocks were also analyzed, and the results indicated that 5 out of 7 feed samples contained higher sodium levels than recommended. This suggests that feed composition may have been a contributing factor to the salt toxicity observed in these cases.
These findings underscore the importance of monitoring sodium levels in poultry feed to prevent similar incidents of salt toxicity, which can lead to severe health issues and increased mortality in chickens.
