2 chickens, different ages, dead this week

[mel83452]

we had 1 of our new layers, 3 mo old appear listless 3 days ago. i separated her from the others, but by evening she was dead. thought nothing of it, as chickens die all the time. then this morning i found another hen, 2 years old dead in the coop. i do not remember any symptoms for her. we have 31 hens. 15 older and now 16 from the new batch. we have not been getting many eggs from the older 15. some days only 3, but we figured this was due to the heat and/or introduction to new chicks…though we did that well over a month ago.

i do not think that they got anything bad in the food scraps. we are very careful about potato peels, and toxic ingredients.

today we are going to clean out the entire coop and wash out all water/food containers.

any other ideas?

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

It is always good to rule out mites/lice and worms as they can take a flock down. Just a thought. Some vets will do fecal tests for worms, and you can inspect them for external parasites. Sometimes mites might not be visible with a casual inspection, though.

 

[seminolewind]

Sounds contageous.

 

[mel83452]

will take a look at one of them and see if they appear to have lice or mites yuck. hopefully it is just birds dying. sometimes it just happens. thanks for the feedback.