Dead chicken this morning

[SUGARBEANFARMS]

All my hens are roughly 8 months old. They are all fine, not sick, no mites, no bumble foot, very healthy.
I went to let them out in the open run but found one of my girls dead on the coop floor. No feathers anywhere. No visible signs of injury. Nothing. Just dead. And rigor had already set in. They were all fine and healthy and happy on their roast last night when I went to close them up. All my other girls are perfectly fine. I removed the dead girl to the words by the lake WAY AWAY from the coop and house to return her body to the earth.
What could have happened? Could she have just plain old died? Though she wasn't that old?

 

[Mrs. K]

I have had chickens for years. In my experience, you can lose a bird unexpectedly during the first 2-3 days. Then once in a while about 10-12 weeks, and then between 5-8 months. I had a more experienced lady call that sudden death. Perfectly fine, and perfectly dead a couple of hours later.

She thought that it was a genetic failure, and that the body could cope when smaller, but eventually it caught up with them.

Once I got a group, and out of 7, I lost one a month, just as you described for 3 months, and never lost another one for years.

Chickens are not real long lived, it does happen.

To the poster where she had 4 all at once and 5th one later on, I would suspect a poison.

Mrs K

 

[azygous]

Are these birds laying? One cause of sudden death is internal laying.

Is there a chance this bird encountered a pesticide for rodents or insects? That would be another cause of sudden death.

If you haven't buried the dead bird, you can cut it open and often it's possible to see eggs accumulated in the abdominal cavity which would indicate internal laying. If the bird was poisoned, sometimes there would be yellowish material inside the mouth.

 

[SUGARBEANFARMS]

All my hens are roughly 8 months old. They are all fine, no stock, no bumble foot, very healthy.
I went to let them out in the open run but found one of my girls dead on the coop floor. No feathers anywhere. No visible signs of injury. Nothing. Just dead. And rigor had already set in. They were all fine and healthy and happy on their roast last night when I went to close them up. All my other girls are perfectly fine. I removed the dead girl to the words by the lake WAY AWAY from the coop and house to return her body to the earth.
What could have happened? Could she have just plain old died? Though she wasn't that old?

Pesticide free here. Good layer. No stuff from mouth. Just nothing. . Just dead

 

[Gnjmiller]

This morning one of our 4 chickens was dead in the coop. 4 hours later we were looking for one we had seen free ranging in our fenced yard and found her dead under the deck! The only difference in their diet was scratch grain. MY it be that but cannot figure out what happened. No sign of injury. Any ideas please?

 

[Smokerbill]

Same thing happened to one of my barred rocks at 7 or 8 months old. Fine in the evening and stiff on the floor the next morning. I opened her up and found what Azygous mentioned, small egg yolks and even the empty soft shell of an egg inside her abdomen. It happens.