1 dead hen, 1 injured - think it's other chickens help please

[PearlGrey]

I found a 16 month old RIR hen dead in the chicken house this morning. Covered in fire ants so she'd been there awhile. There wasn't a mark on her but her neck may have been broken. I couldn't do a very thorough post-mortem because of the ants.

Earlier this week, I found one of my BR hens injured - she won't put weight on one of her feet. Again no visible injury - but this bird survived a dog attack several months ago and limped for a long time so I thought maybe she re-injured the leg.

Although I can't be positive about when the gimpy chicken was injured, I noticed it first thing in the morning when she didn't come running out with the others. I know the dead chicken was alive when I shut them up last night.

My chicken house is very secure. Completely enclosed, hardware cloth buried all around out to 2 ft from the base. There are no signs that anything got in either night. So I'm thinking it had to be the other chickens.

I had (until last night) five 16 month old hens - 2 RIR and 3 BR. On July 4, I integrated this year's chicks - 3 BR, 1 Silver Lace Wyandotte, 2 white Leghorns, and 2 Americaunas. The new chicks are now 4 months old. The SLW, both Americaunas and 2 BRs turned out to be cockerels. They free-range all day and are shut up at night. The younger chickens don't mix with the older hens during the day and they roost on different roosts at night. The boys do some posturing and chasing of each other but haven't shown any seriousl aggression towards each other and none towards anybody else - except yesterday when one of the Americauanas tried to chase one of my cats. The chicken house is 100 square feet and there are four roosts in it.

I read through some old threads on here and the consensus seems to be that roosters don't kill hens. So I'm mystified as to what is going on, and more importantly, how to keep my remaining four older hens safe! Should I try dividing the chicken house to separate them from the young ones? Should I cull some roosters? If so, how do I know I'm not getting rid of everybody but Freddie Kruger?

The older hens were my first chickens, so I'm not really experienced with poultry. Advice greatly appreciated!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Sometimes an apparently healthy chicken will die, sometimes there were signs you missed, and sometimes there are none, unless the hen appears to be pecked to death I would not suspect your other chickens, fire ants in the coop would concern me more. It is possible that something frightened her in the middle of the night causing her to panic, flying into the wall and breaking her neck. The one with the limp might have been frightened too causing it to injure the leg. Check for signs of predators, or did you have any storms last night that could have scared them.

 

[PearlGrey]

That might be it, all right. We've had some bad storms at night lately. The more I thought about it, the more I realized if one of the other chickens had attacked her there would've been blood and feathers around.

Sadly the fire ants are a fact of life around here. I don't know what to do about them - before I had chickens I put out ant bait but now of course the chickens would eat it so I can't. I've seen fire ants in the chicken house on other occasions - they come in after the feed, I'm sure. But they haven't seemed to bother the chickens - the ants don't get up on the roosts.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

 

[beginnergirl]

So sorry for your loss. I can't imagine losing one of mine.

As far as ants, I use DE under the bedding and brushed into cracks of the coop and near the entry point where I've seen ants. These weren't fire ants. OMG. But the ants are mostly gone. I might see a couple. But nothing like before. We live on a giant ant paradise. My hens sadly do not eat them.

 

[aart]

Not likely that your chickens killed another chicken, tho they might feed on a dead one.
I suppose it's possible that the ants killed her if she was sleeping on the ground because of roost bullying.

I'd be getting rid of those cockerels.....
.....all but maybe one of them, won't be long until they start trying to mate the hens and pullets, causing much chaos.