Chicken Dropped Dead - No signs - Necropsy Results On Post 32

[Attack Chicken]

I hope your hen doesn't have anything for the sake of your flock. I would be flipping out if that happened to me. Call myself lucky I've never seen a dead chicken in real.

 

[basicliving]

So sorry to hear you lost one, Nifty. I found this thread because I lost a hen last night too. I found her this morning in a nest box. I saw her in there last night and thought she was going broody, but this morning, she was dead. No trauma or injury evident on her body. But the area around her vent was caked with what looked like dried egg yolk - although the actual vent looked clean. I've had trouble with her laying soft shelled eggs, so I imagine it may be related to her egg making somehow. I did my own amateur necropsy of sorts - I opened her up and her abdomen was filled with what looks like yolk. Lots of runny yellow stuff in there.

She was a Golden Pencilled Hamburg and the only other chicken I've lost was another Golden Pencilled Hamburg about 6 months ago. That one was fine at 4PM, sitting hunched in a corner around 5PM, and dead by 6:30PM. I had brought her inside in a crate when I saw her hunched down, and she just kept going downhill (getting more and more lathargic) and eventually died in a matter of about an hour and a half later. She was the first that I lost and I decided to wait and see if any others started looking puny. They never did, so I chalked it up to something this hen ate, or something that was just wrong with her genetically or the like.

I did a search this morning and found your thread. I'll be interested to learn what you find out.

Sorry for the long post!

Penny

 

[lockedhearts]

Sorry to hear of your loss. I am fortunate, there is a State Lab about 5 miles from my House. The State Vet is there one day a week and they also necropsy and draw blood for testing for free.
I lost a young Cochin Rooster to unknown causes and ended up finding it was genetic.
Any information will be useful. Sounds like it was sudden ,possibly a Heart Attack???

 

[Im4Eggcellence]

Quote:
That would be a very interesting project

 

[ZepChick]

yeah, that would be an interesting project. Not sure how we would go about it though. Maybe a sticky somewhere? Or start a thread somewhere dedicated to it?

 

[Birch Run Farm]

Me too, I came home from work to a dead cuckoo marans pullet. Looks like she died during the night, she was lying under the roosts. My assumtion is heart failure, no visible external injuries, no reasonable explanation.

 

[Beekissed]

I had one die the other day like this, Rob. She was not even a year old and showed no signs of illness. When I found her she was lying on her back and her comb was purple. This alerted me to the fact that is was probably cardiac/vascular in nature.

I did my own dissection to see what could have happened. I found that she had suffered from a pulmonary embolus~blood clot~right up near her heart in the pulmonary artery. I found only two other irregularities: she was not ovulating regularly and she had a very enlarged liver~healthy in color and consistency but very enlarged.

I've had no other illness in my flock and this is the first death.

 

[FisherMOM]

I suspect that my 1 year old GSL may soon be among the list of mysterious deaths. Her laying habits are getting odd. She lays eggs from the roost some times, she lays weird shaped eggs and then HUMONGOUS eggs. Today, while walking, she dropped a shell-less egg. just..PLOP...and kept on walking.

I feed them layer pellets and eggshells and i just fed them the last of the oyster shell... I need to get more.

 

[gpamela3499]

Sorry about the hen.

I would be very interested in the results of the tests. Please keeps us posted.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Update: I shipped her out at 11:00 am and she stayed at the FedEx Kinkos location until about 5:00 PM (good thing it was a cool day and I had blue ice packs in there). She was delivered at 9:30 AM the next day!

I called just to make sure I had packaged her well. They said there were not reported problems and that I might get a prelim report in a few days / early next week.