05/02/2026
WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS! NECROPSY/AUTOPSY/DISSECTION! EDUCATIONAL POST!
The first 3 photos are cute little fluffy 3 day old chicks & a random AC info sheet.. Photo #4 everything changes! Do Not Look If This Will Upset Or Bother You!
First things first.. This baby took a long while to hatch and something was off. It was 3 days old today, still having a bit of its egg tooth. The baby passed. I did not cull for this purpose! I do hard cull birds, but there has to be a reason for me to do so! I don’t take culling lightly, but it is necessary at times. Bless this little one, as today its short life served a greater purpose.. and its short stay on this earth WILL NOT go unnoticed!
I came home today, to find it had passed. So I made the decision to do as I had been thinking of doing.. So under five 100w bright white bulbs, my kitchen table transformed into an Operating Room to preform an Autopsy/Dissection! Making sure to handle this little one with the utmost respect during the process. A brief look into the internal make up, the fibro, the skin, organs, severed spinal cord with cerebrospinal fluid in and around the spine. This is Ayam Cemani!
As many of you know Ayam Cemani are a tough breed, they are not for the faint at heart, they do have a HIGH cull rate, much higher than other birds if your breeding toward any SOP. My birds are not perfect, they are continuous work! Work to be better.. Working toward perfection! A perfection that I may or may not ever achieve! Although.. I’m not sure I have ever seen what one would say is a perfect Cemani! With that said, I have nice birds, equal to some, better than some, but not perfect! We all start with a dream of having these magnificent birds, unknowingly most start with stock that, well to say the least is subpar and it doesn’t take long to realize, to have nice birds you are gonna spend a fortune, invest countless hours, cull birds that you wish you didn’t have to but you must, you will have many losses: be it birds, your sanity or finances! You will experience all of it with Cemani.
A huge topic of late is testing birds! Are your birds good stock.. Do they have sufficient fibro.. Don’t buy birds that aren’t tested.. If birds aren’t tested they aren’t Cemani..
Ive seen it all, read it all, watched it all happening before me! This is all very new to a lot of people, so new in fact that it brings more questions than maybe answers. My birds have not been tested. Will I test them, maybe in time. We will see. It’s a bit early for me. I’m not against research and or growth.. but I’m not jumping on the band wagon just yet either!
Maybe I’m just holding on to the old ways, maybe a bit old fashioned.. But sometimes you can’t help but notice, putting in the work is worth while when you can physically see a stunning bird before you! And this ‘Little One’ was and is just that.. STUNNING!
