Chicken fine yesterday, eaten up with maggots today????!!!

[Cheekuns]

I am so very sad. Today, we had to cull one of our beautiful 1 y/o buff orpington hens. It was just a shocking and odd situation and I was hoping someone here could help us understand what might have happened.

Yesterday, she was FINE...fluffy and eating and being wonderful, as usual. Today, she looked like someone spilled oil on her back. Upon closer inspection, we smelled her and realized her body looked rotten and she had pulled out a bunch of her feathers. She was still acting normal, but she was literally covered from head to toe on her back side in maggots! We decided to cull her so we could look more closely and see what in the world was going on. We came up empty-handed. She was literally just alive with maggots! How in the world could this have happened? Can anyone here give us any insight so we can protect the rest of the flock? Our chickens are very clean and well loved. They are 100% free range and we also feed them layer pellets one time a day. They only sleep in their coop and it is kept clean with fresh bedding laid down monthly or so.

I did go through and check the skin of some of my other girls (we have 14) and none of them seemed to have the same issue. You should have seen this chicken, though, it was awful!

 

[marymac]

Did it have any open sores or wounds?

 

[JSGamefowl]

could of been a small swore under feathers that you can not see , the magots only eat dead tissue so they were actually helping her from getting to bad infected, they prolly finally just at threw and mad a bigger hole is why they where on the out side and the other birds were prolly the ones that pecked her trying to get the maggots , some times maggots are good all you do is just get them all out and start with atibotics and keep area cleaned and free of any more , i have seen horse chickens and cows have bigs swores with maggots and after cleaned up and gave a lil penicilin were back to normal in no time , they use maggots in humans to on areas with dead tissue

 

[Cheekuns]

I didn't see any sores, but we were thinking it could have been that.

I am not sure she could have been saved. She had maggots litterally from the top of her head, down her back, around her belly, and the feathers were not only picked off, but she was bleeding and the maggots were jam packed in there as tight as sardines all over her. It was so sad and freaky. Her skin and feathers - everything - was black like she had oil on her or something. It was so gross and sad.

I just don't know how it happened so fast!!

 

[auntieLisa]

Quote:
You should call your local Ag department. See what they have to say. You said you culled her to get a closer look. Did you perform and necropsy? What did she look like inside?