Hi, I have a chicken coop area with a large run. None of those chickens have been dying from this. But neighboring their run is our small orchard where there were 11 geese, 10 cockerels and a turkey hen. The geese live there because they clean up the orchard but the turkey was "Christmas" and the cockerels... we were waiting for them to get bigger and didn't have any other place to put them. So, one day I go out and 1 cockerel is dead, the smallest goose is dead and 1 cockerel is barely dead and was dead by the next day. Week or so goes by and the turkey is not behaving like her normal self. She sleeps a lot, standing up. Doesn't respond when called. Next day is weak and cannot stand. Next day she's gone. A couple days later. Didn't notice anything weird. Did a head count and one goose was missing. Walked around and found her sitting on an empty nest, dead.
My observations...
So, by coincidence, all the birds that have died were hatched THIS year. None of my older birds have been sick or died.
Symptoms are weakness or sudden death
No injury
The birds are fed cracked corn, layer pellets and free range for bugs and fruit in the orchard. I also feed them dandelion when I harvest the root so not every day but on occasion. I also give them non-bread table scraps.
They have a big swimming tub and a bucket of fresh water which I refill daily
all the poop seems normal to me
The geese never seek shelter but there is a 3-walled structure out there where they can get out of the rain and break the wind if they want to go in it. I see chickens in there occasionally. Other than that, no shelter is provided for these birds. I used to leave open 3 pens that we have and the cockerels would roost inside one and there was an igloo and one has a grapevine covering so they would like to go in there and clean them up but I closed them off after separating the sick bird when the first 3 died. That whole area became really poopy. I threw down hay to cover up the poop but its been raining a lot so its still really messy in that corner near the pens.
My observations...
So, by coincidence, all the birds that have died were hatched THIS year. None of my older birds have been sick or died.
Symptoms are weakness or sudden death
No injury
The birds are fed cracked corn, layer pellets and free range for bugs and fruit in the orchard. I also feed them dandelion when I harvest the root so not every day but on occasion. I also give them non-bread table scraps.
They have a big swimming tub and a bucket of fresh water which I refill daily
all the poop seems normal to me
The geese never seek shelter but there is a 3-walled structure out there where they can get out of the rain and break the wind if they want to go in it. I see chickens in there occasionally. Other than that, no shelter is provided for these birds. I used to leave open 3 pens that we have and the cockerels would roost inside one and there was an igloo and one has a grapevine covering so they would like to go in there and clean them up but I closed them off after separating the sick bird when the first 3 died. That whole area became really poopy. I threw down hay to cover up the poop but its been raining a lot so its still really messy in that corner near the pens.
