Advise, wisdom, insight, anlightenment needed!

[Chocohen]

Hello,

Ok, either I have the strangest bunch of hens in the world or I am just not trained up enough yet....probably the latter but here goes...
I purchased a Blue Isbar chick about 4 months ago (he turned out to be a rooster) and shortly thereafter I got him some friends in the way of 6 Rhode Island Red Chicks. Several things I need some help on here...First, this past weekend my daughter went out to clean out the coop. As usual she took all 7 of the chickens They are all 4- 5 months old now and brought them out into the driveway so she did not have to clean around them. We do not have any idea what happened, but the Rooster once she set him down started acting strange and literally keeled over deader than 6 o'clock! What in the world could have happened here folks? I have no clue. He seemed to be fine but was an oddball in that he would never come out of the coop - stayed in all the time.

Moreover, the hens even though I would open the coop up all day would only venture out for short times and right back in they would go. I wrote it off to just not being used to going out side. However, once the Rooster dies this past weekend the hens have completely changed? Now they cannot wait to get outside and spend a lot of time out of the coop. This started almost immediately.

In addition, I had roost poles in the coop and they would never roost on them. Rooster dies, now they are using the roost poles.
Lastly, and more comical in nature, a couple of weeks ago I installed nesting boxes in the coop (4 of them made out of 5 gallon buckets with lids - saw it on You Tube and works great!) Chickens would not even look at them and I has them on mounted on a shelf in the coop about 4 ft off the ground. After the Roo dies, now they get up there at the entrance of the nesting box, roost on the lip of the lid with their heads stuck inside the bucket and their chicken butts facing out! What the heck is this all about? THey are getting close to being of age in order to start laying but this seems like an odd ritual! Now to add to my whoas I have 27 more chicks on the way....This should really mess them up!

Please help me out here on all of this!

 

[QueenMisha]

Sometimes birds keel over for no reason at all. It just happens sometimes and can usually be chalked up to "something went wrong inside."

Roosters impact their flocks a lot - they will affect the hen's personalities, habits, and behaviors. It's quite normal to see behavioral changes after a flock loses its rooster.

 

[azygous]

This is so right. Roos can be very influential over hens, and the entire dynamic changes when they are gone.

As for what happened to your roo, sometimes a chick is hatched with genetic defects, and like a ticking time bomb, a point is reached where they expire. But it sounds like your boy had been feeling sick for awhile prior to his sudden death. Not wanting to come out of the coop, preferring to be alone, are signs of a sick bird. He probably had a bad heart.