I have lost 3 hens in the past 3 days, they kept falling down, then they died by the next morning. I was wondering if this could have been caused by them lacking some nutrients. Please any help will be appreciated.
Not much info to go on: Any respiratory symptoms? Have you inspected them for external parasites? Have you wormed them? Have you checked for moldy feed? Etc etc etc....
I had made a mistake and fed them only fodder, but I'm switching them back to mainly feed with fodder as a supplement, Haven't noticed any respiratory problems, and as far as I know their feed isn't moldy. I didn't realize that the fodder didn't have all the nutrients they needed.
They may be short on nutrition but I'd be surprised if that was the cause of three deaths in as many days. A lot more info is needed. How old are they, are they on a regular deworming program, any new birds added to the flock lately, have you checked for mite or lice infestation?
Their 2 years old, the last time I introduced new chickens was about 5 months ago (Also the last time I got an egg), I haven't used any dewormers, but I have checked for signs of them, and haven't seen any, they had mites about 2 months ago (I lost several to them) but finally got rid of them and no signs of them. Its discouraging losing so many chickens so fast.
If they've never been dewormed, you have a drop in egg production and dead birds then I would certainly deworm them. Yes this could be some other problem but you have to start somewhere in trying to figure them out and the best place to start is by ruling out the most common possibilities first and going on from there. Deworm them and make sure the mites have not come back. If you didn't do a repeat mite treatment 7 to 10 days after the first one then you will have mites again. They can be very difficult to get rid of, only miss a few and it doens't take long for the population to rebound.
