- Nov 20, 2007
- 359
- 3
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Hi everyone. I haven't been here in quite a while. Had a baby in July and well, you know how that goes! Anyway, on the chicken front, things are quite awful. For three years I raised chickens and never had even the slightest illness. Then, starting last Spring, we had our first chicken death. Our best guess was internal laying. Then, this past Fall, another death. This one, like the other, just seemed to be "off" for a while, and then there were about 3 days where she was really bad and then, dead. Now I have another chicken, our favorite, that seems to be going in the same direction.
So not much in the way of symptoms. What I've noticed is that first I'll see that they aren't quite themselves, standing with their tail down almost all the time seems to be the first big clue, slight lethargy, not as interested in running around when free-ranging. This goes on for months, but not all the time. Just occasionally. I guess I really notice it at times when they would typically be running around. Eventually their combs start looking a bit shriveled and they become more lethargic. Finally it gets to a point where they're not really eating at all, except for a few bites. Oddly, through it all, their feathers remain healthy, they don't lose color in their combs until the day or two before death. But they'll go months just seeming off and lethargic. They kind of seem like depressed teenagers or something. It's hard to pinpoint laying behavior because the first one that died was sick over the winter when laying pretty much ceases here anyway, the second died after the summer, and I'm pretty sure her laying dropped off, and now this latest one is sick again in winter, so no laying.
I have feeling no one can help much due to the vagueness of this all, but does anyone know of some very slow moving disease, virus, or whatever, that would kill one chicken at a time, with so many months of droopiness before they finally die?
So not much in the way of symptoms. What I've noticed is that first I'll see that they aren't quite themselves, standing with their tail down almost all the time seems to be the first big clue, slight lethargy, not as interested in running around when free-ranging. This goes on for months, but not all the time. Just occasionally. I guess I really notice it at times when they would typically be running around. Eventually their combs start looking a bit shriveled and they become more lethargic. Finally it gets to a point where they're not really eating at all, except for a few bites. Oddly, through it all, their feathers remain healthy, they don't lose color in their combs until the day or two before death. But they'll go months just seeming off and lethargic. They kind of seem like depressed teenagers or something. It's hard to pinpoint laying behavior because the first one that died was sick over the winter when laying pretty much ceases here anyway, the second died after the summer, and I'm pretty sure her laying dropped off, and now this latest one is sick again in winter, so no laying.
I have feeling no one can help much due to the vagueness of this all, but does anyone know of some very slow moving disease, virus, or whatever, that would kill one chicken at a time, with so many months of droopiness before they finally die?