Thank you for the insights. As a first-time chicken owner, I did my best to keep her as healthy as possible, especially during the time she wasn’t laying. After her passing, I put on gloves and checked as deeply as I could for any signs of a broken egg but felt no hard shell. The glove only came...
Yes, I read about that too, but she stopped laying well before then. She had her first batch of eggs as soon as she reached laying age, but her last few eggs had soft shells at the base. One time, she became egg-bound, and I had to help her. Her final egg was a fairy egg, and after that, she...
I’m located in Miami, Florida, which isn’t exactly the ideal place for livestock, but wild chickens have definitely taken over the streets here—that’s how Lucy came into my life. After experiencing the joy of raising a chicken as a pet and seeing how many people keep backyard chickens as part of...
Yea… reading up on everything this past day, I think it’s a hard yes that she was laying internally with no external signs like water belly or lash eggs.
Or maybe liver failure of some sort, you never know if she got into anything while foraging that was toxic and that’s why her stool was...
From what I understand while I was in vet school and studying for my boards exam, most of the time it could be a nutritional factor like calcium deficiency or something to do with lighting. I live in Florida, I didn’t think too much of it because my hen wasn’t a laying breed and sometimes...
Yes, she laid her first batch of eggs when she reached laying age. She was egg-bound once, but after an Epsom salt bath, she laid the egg, although one end of the shell was soft. After that, she stopped laying for a while, then laid a fairy egg, and nothing more. I made sure she was getting all...
Unfortunately, I buried her yesterday morning, so I don’t think I’ll be able to perform a necropsy myself. While I do know how to do them from my time in clinics, I didn’t have the heart to examine my first and only one. Instead, I’ve been researching online to piece together her probable cause...
I don’t think I’ll have anymore chickens for awhile. I can’t replace her so quickly but I do see myself having more in the future. They are a special type of love. Thank you for your comments :)
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures. I’ll see if I find the towel she pooped on during those hours and take a picture. Everything happened between 3 AM and 5 AM. The stool was definitely a bright yolk-yellow color. She was perfectly fine before that, and there’s no chance she ate something...
Yesterday, I lost my first chicken, Lucy, who was also my first pet. As a small animal veterinarian with limited knowledge of chicken medicine, I’m struggling to understand her sudden death and would appreciate insights from the chicken community.
She had been acting normal all day—eating...