Chicken Died Today =(

[Aquatic_blue]

I am stumped right now. This is the first chicken I have lost. I couldn't believe it. I was quite shocked. We have had them all a bit over 2 years. There was no blood or obvious injuries.

All the chickens were eating and grazing just fine this morning.

It was 97 degrees today (looks like a heat wave is headed for us) so I am thinking maybe heat exhaustion. Although, we leave water out and plenty of shade that they always take advantage of and they don't normally go back in the coop in the middle of the day. I don't know if maybe it got bitten by something venomous or ate something it shouldn't have.

With one of our chickens I recently broke it's broodiness, but maybe it went back to it and stayed in the coop too long with the heat.

It was super sad to see one of our chickens laying on the wood shavings in the coop, totally stiff with a wing slightly away from it's body. Ants were all over it and the other chickens went in and stared and clucked.

My kids are sad and I am a little disappointed this has happened.

 

[JessicaDotta]

I'm sorry! That is hard! Not sure what happened either. I bet some of the other ppl here will help you narrow it down.

Can you move your other chickens to another coop meanwhile, just in case it is a disease?

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I am stumped right now. This is the first chicken I have lost. I couldn't believe it. I was quite shocked. We have had them all a bit over 2 years. There was no blood or obvious injuries.

All the chickens were eating and grazing just fine this morning.

It was 97 degrees today (looks like a heat wave is headed for us) so I am thinking maybe heat exhaustion. Although, we leave water out and plenty of shade that they always take advantage of and they don't normally go back in the coop in the middle of the day. I don't know if maybe it got bitten by something venomous or ate something it shouldn't have.

With one of our chickens I recently broke it's broodiness, but maybe it went back to it and stayed in the coop too long with the heat.

It was super sad to see one of our chickens laying on the wood shavings in the coop, totally stiff with a wing slightly away from it's body. Ants were all over it and the other chickens went in and stared and clucked.

My kids are sad and I am a little disappointed this has happened.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Unfortunately some don't live a long time. There's so many things that can go wrong, it would be hard to even know unless a necropsy is performed.
If you still have the carcass you can do your own to see if you find anything obvious or make arrangements to send the body to your state lab. https://www.metzerfarms.com/PoultryLabs.cfm

If you have more die within a short period of time, then it would be wise to consider sending for necropsy.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I'm sorry.
Did you get your chickens as day-old or very young chicks, or as laying hens? If layers, she could have been quite a bit older than two years, and as another poster pointed out, chickens don't live a long time, on average. But as you pointed out, heat could have been a factor. I think if she succumbed to heat while brooding however, you would have found her on the nest. Are there snakes in your area? Without having a necropsy done, you may never know. If you should lose another hen soon and wish to have it necropsied, double-bag it in plastic and refrigerate it (do not freeze) until you can send it off to the lab as indicated in a previous post.
I am sorry for your loss.

 

[micstrachan]

I’m so sorry for your loss. One possibility, especially in the heat on a seemingly healthy hen, is fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome. What do you feed your flock?

 

[Aquatic_blue]

I'm sorry! That is hard! Not sure what happened either. I bet some of the other ppl here will help you narrow it down.

Can you move your other chickens to another coop meanwhile, just in case it is a disease?

We have two coops, but when I found the dead chicken in the coop was when I was going to shut them in for the night and that was a little bit before the sun was completely down.

We did as much of a cleanup as possible with the other chickens in there not wanting to go anywhere. We completely changed out the bedding for them.

They don't use the other coop for more than the nesting box (unless one is being broody and wants to try to stay overnight to hatch some eggs) because they outgrew it.

We've been working on getting a different coop in there for 'em, but haven't been able to get that started yet

 

[Aquatic_blue]

I'm sorry for your loss.

Unfortunately some don't live a long time. There's so many things that can go wrong, it would be hard to even know unless a necropsy is performed.
If you still have the carcass you can do your own to see if you find anything obvious or make arrangements to send the body to your state lab. https://www.metzerfarms.com/PoultryLabs.cfm

If you have more die within a short period of time, then it would be wise to consider sending for necropsy.

I have heard about necropsies somewhat around these forums, but never knew where to take them.

Thanks for the link. It seems the nearest one is an hour and a half away from here, though. How much does a necropsy usually cost?

We took a look at the chicken, but nothing too in depth. It was kind of hard to with all the ants on her.

I'll keep the link handy, though.

 

[Aquatic_blue]

I'm sorry.
Did you get your chickens as day-old or very young chicks, or as laying hens? If layers, she could have been quite a bit older than two years, and as another poster pointed out, chickens don't live a long time, on average. But as you pointed out, heat could have been a factor. I think if she succumbed to heat while brooding however, you would have found her on the nest. Are there snakes in your area? Without having a necropsy done, you may never know. If you should lose another hen soon and wish to have it necropsied, double-bag it in plastic and refrigerate it (do not freeze) until you can send it off to the lab as indicated in a previous post.
I am sorry for your loss.

We got them as chicks from TSC - they were the red sex links, I believe. They look like Rhode Island Reds.

We raised them and have had minor things here or there like the chickens pecking each other raw, but that problem has been well solved for about 6 months or so. No feet issues, either. They've been overall pretty healthy chickens.

Yeah, we didn't find her in a nest or on any eggs. She was just lying there in the coop on the floor.

We do have rattlesnakes, which are our main venomous ones our here. I haven't seen one in our yard ever, but have seen them around the area before so of course they could've passed through trying to find an egg or something to eat.

I'm not sure if they are affected by black widows. My dad recently came by to cleaned one of his sheds (it has had stuff in it since the 90s) and there were a lot of old black widows in there. He squashed a bunch and the chickens ended up eating quite a few of them and this was a few weeks ago, but more spiders have migrated out of there and into their coop. While I've done my best to get rid of webs and get spiders, they usually get to the spiders first and never seem affected by it.

We do have other wildlife and I'm not sure about maybe if they got something from the other wild birds out there. We also have quite a few bunnies, rats, and mice that are out there.

It's kind of rough not knowing - like I'm here wondering if there's anything I could've done better.

I'm wondering how much the necropsy costs and thank you for letting me know how to store it.

 

[Aquatic_blue]

I’m so sorry for your loss. One possibility, especially in the heat on a seemingly healthy hen, is fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome. What do you feed your flock?

We have always fed our chickens organic crumbles.

Snacks that we have given them are usually veggies and fruits (carrots, watermelon, lettuce, etc.) and it's not every day. It's not like there would be anything stopping anyone from feeding them something through the fence, though. There's a lot of foot traffic that goes through there and we've had some drug users (thankfully a few of them are in jail) that used to just love to sit and stare at the chickens while they're high as a kite. I've never seen anyone feed them anything, but this had to have taken place when we weren't home because the chickens were all right this morning and then we checked on them all in the later morning and left for the afternoon and when we came back we chilled inside for a bit because it was hot and then went back out in the evening.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I put poison on an ant hill on our property a few days ago. Although, I covered the area with a plastic bin with rocks on top and around it to make it inaccessible to the chickens. We've done this with ants for a while and haven't had an issue doing this, but now I'm thinking if an ant may have wandered out of the bin and they ate it. Although, it was a fire ant hill - I have never seen them eat fire ants. They'll eat the little black ones, but I haven't doused any poison on those yet. I really hate doing the ant poison, we try to do the gel ones that they walk inside whenever possible. I've tried all sorts of natural things on the ants - diatomaceous earth, neem oil solution, castor oil, dish soap and water, etc. - nothing has worked and they become so numerous without the horned toads in large numbers like they used to be. We have super colonies out here or something.

 

[Aquatic_blue]

I'm also thinking if them eating trash would be an issue. We live about 500 yards within a gas station. The trash blow over is awful. We have a lot of windy days and a lot of trash gets stuck in our fence - most times it's plastic, Styrofoam cups, chip bags, plastic straws/lids, popped balloons, etc. and I have found some nasty stuff in our yard (condoms, used diabetic test strips, etc.), but also I have stuff in our yard that I assume people just throw in our yard carelessly (we have a lot of foot traffic around and I have found things that just can't be explained by wind through a chain link fence unless an extremely strong dust devil hurled it over). It's just bad and while we do pick up the trash when we can, it's certain we can never get it all. There is also this magically appearing glass...I know a neighbor nearby at one point busted out a window on their trailer because they "couldn't get it open." and there was a lot of glass in our yard, there are some all the way on the opposite end and it just keeps appearing along with nails, tacks, and such. It's terrible, really.