Muntjac - fibrosed chest cavity

[TopDown]

Shot a little muntjac buck this morning. He appeared fit and well - indeed he went out onto a field and tried to loop back into the wood so I had him under observation for a while. He even managed a little dash from the shot site which was a decent effort given what the PowerBlade had done on exit (photo 1).

Opened him up for the gralloch and he had a very gassy and quite thin looking gut towards the anus. Faeces weren't really very formed. No external evidence of scour was present. Mesenteric chain was fine. I usually start on the right of the chest when I release the diaphragm. No problem on that side. The other side as you can see (photo 2) was very fibrosed and difficult to cut. I thought it may be pleurisy but the lungs were pretty free. What was left of them was OK if a little softer feeling than I would expect.

I couldn't really identify a cause for this but thought you gents might find it interesting.

 

[weblyish]

Always interested to see unusual stuff

what was the outcome for this one - did you keep or bin it?

you said mesenteric was fine but no mention of the others
If the gut contents seemed noticably odd I might err to just stopping there but looks in decent condition externally so was obviously getting on fine despite some lung scarring and if all the other nodes seemed in order I might keep it

 

[South of the M4]

Shot a little muntjac buck this morning. He appeared fit and well - indeed he went out onto a field and tried to loop back into the wood so I had him under observation for a while. He even managed a little dash from the shot site which was a decent effort given what the PowerBlade had done on exit (photo 1).

Opened him up for the gralloch and he had a very gassy and quite thin looking gut towards the anus. Faeces weren't really very formed. No external evidence of scour was present. Mesenteric chain was fine. I usually start on the right of the chest when I release the diaphragm. No problem on that side. The other side as you can see (photo 2) was very fibrosed and difficult to cut. I thought it may be pleurisy but the lungs were pretty free. What was left of them was OK if a little softer feeling than I would expect.

I couldn't really identify a cause for this but thought you gents might find it interesting.

It would be interesting to see what's underneath the fibrous growth. May well be a broken rib/trauma that has healed but caused irritation, so the animal has deposited this to compensate.
As asked above, what were the other lymph nodes like? If any abscesses present, you may want to ditch the carcass.

 

[TopDown]

I didn't find any abnormal lymph nodes. No abscesses. I did reject the carcass. Was probably fine but something just felt a little bit awry for me.

Cutting that fibrous growth was really quite difficult so didn't get to any bone injury.