Just outside w/ the flock and noticed one of our 9 1/2 month old light brahma hens sounds very strange. It only started today, yesterday everyone sounded normal. It has been very cold and dry here for the past week, and last night was the coldest yet, getting down to about 10 degrees. Yeti is big and very fluffy, if she's molting its a very slow molt, and she has the tiniest pea comb and wattles. Its a little hard to see if her comb/wattles are paler than usual, since she has such underdeveloped ones, and they have always been pretty pale (like a pre-lay pullets). She also hasn't been laying for about a month now (along with most of our other hens). She is out free-ranging with the other chickens and acting fairly normally, maybe just a little subdued. She just sounds awful, sort of moaning loudly with every breath (in and out), and occasionally shaking her head and letting out what sounds like a sneeze or a hiccup, but no mucus/discharge. It sounds sort of what our leghorn sounded like just before she first began to lay this summer, but it doesn't make sense that this hen would randomly pick up laying again right now does it? All our other chickens seem fine and are handling the cold quite nicely, even though many of them have pretty good-sized combs and are half-bald from molting! Any ideas, anyone?
