Khaki hen dead!? Help!

Sorry, idk if I should post here or not, since this is mostly a duck issue and not chicken. Can anyone help me?

She was alive and fine just 2hrs ago! Now she is stiff as a board, laying flat, feet back, wings slightly out to the side, slight foam/bubbles of drool coming from her mouth down her throat. Her butt has runny brown poo, good weight, no feathers out of place.

2hrs ago I saw her and her sister walking about. One of the two was keeping the other from the pool of water for a few mins, but eventually they were all fine and sharing.

WTF??!?

I've never lost a duck, what the heck happened?


AND! My big rooster started limping yesterday, today he stayed in the chicken yard all day....ugh, what is going on?!

I'm going to cry my face off tonight. Anyone know what might of happened to the duckie? I saw that 15 ppl viewed, but no one can help?

I don't know if I have an answer. Any chance she ate something she shouldn't have? Perhaps a mouse that could have been poisoned? or something else. Any chance she could have had a respiration infection you didn't know about?

Ducks eat mice?!?! Oh S*TH!
Yes, we have mice and we could not get rid of them so we just started using poison! Oh no, what do I do? I'm so screwed, all ducks and chickens could catch a mouse, no way to keep them from the mice.


How fast could the poisoned mouse kill the duck? At least 2 hrs if she did eat one...dang it!


I'm glad I didn't give the duck to the dog, if it was poison, idk if she would eat the stomach, but I'm sure other parts would be dangerous to the dog...

maybe it was just her time, how old was she? seems odd, i have never seen a duck die before. theres a good chance it wasnt a sickness because duckas are hardy animals and hardly ever get sick.

10mo.

She either got poisoned or choked on something. Sorry about your duck I love ducks and don't even have chickens, just ducks.

I'm sorry for your loss, I vote with the poison, too fast for naything else unless it was a birth defect

Are there shrews in your area? Maybe that was the cause of the limping in your rooster? Or could your duck have gotten INTO the area where the mice poison is??

They do have a "stickie" with a list of questions to answer that might give some idea of what was going on. Ex. age? breed? etc. etc. I don't have so I can't say and can only ask questions that might give a clue as to what happened.

So I will ask.

What pool of water? Your pool? Clean water? Any leaves get in there? Any medicated chicken feed around? Fenced in? Anything in the mouth? Laying age?

Not familiar with duck diseases but. Any kind of stress things going on? Chased by dog, kids or whatever? Any broken bones? Soft spots on the body? Anything under the feathers?

Have you given or fed anything new or different? Vitamins or meds or wormers?

As for the rooster. Sometimes the roosts are too high. Could this be the case? I'd shut him up away from the others for a while to rest his leg. Look for swelling on the affected leg. Any stressors? Being chased or jumping from high places? Sometimes they get a bump and bruise a leg now and then.

I'm not sure how hardy ducks are compared to chickens but with all the breeding and what not, it seems to me it is not uncommon to lose the occasional bird. Now if you started losing lots of birds or seeing symptoms of disease then I'd be concerned. Hens especially have reproductive issues that don't become apparent until near laying time.

Vitamins in large amounts can cause kidney problems and should be used sparingly. Never as a cure.

Hope some of this helps,

Rancher

I am so sorry to hear you lost your duck, and yes ducks and chickens eat mice, Ii saw 2 of my hens eating mice today. I never put poison out just too easy for one of the animals to get hold of who it was intended for. She was a beautiful duck sorry you lost her.