Histological structure of the kidneys in broad breasted turkeys

Due to the insurgence of numerous kidney diseases in poultry, the urinary apparatus has become the object of the current scientific research. The kidneys are involved in the excretory, homeostatic, metabolic, endocrine and protective functions of the body, being the main system that preserves the homeostasis of the whole body, contributing to the regulation of the qualitative composition of urine, its volume and osmotic pressure. The aim of the current research was to study the morphological and histological structure of the kidneys in broad breasted turkeys. The research was carried out at the Department of Anatomy, Histology, Physiology and Pathological Anatomy of the Institute of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnologies of Omsk State Agrarian University in 2021. To accomplish this goal, the methods of conventional and thin preparation were applied on wet specimens from the carcasses of five broad breasted turkeys. The sampling of material for light-optical histological examination was carried out within 10 minutes after the slaughter of the birds. Their urinary organs are represented by elongated paired parenchymal kidneys located in the preacetabular part of the ilium. The broad breasted turkey has four lobes: cranial, accessory, middle and caudal, with different mass, length and width; the relative weight of the kidneys amounts to 0.65% of body weight. The histological examination revealed that the kidney consists of a more developed cortical zone and a less developed medullary zone. The thickness of the cortical zone in broad-breasted turkeys occupies 83.5% of the volume, while the medullary zone occupies 16.5%. In the parenchyma of the kidney, two types of nephrons can be noted: cortical (reptilian) ones and medullary or juxtamedullary (mammalian) ones.