Clueless and saddened

[heimie911]

I am looking for advice. We are new chicken folks and we had our first sad incident last night. We have 8 chickens and last night we checked on them (7-8 months old) in their coop. They all seemed fine. 2 hours later, when I went to lock them in for the night, one of them was laying on the floor with it's legs straight out and not moving. I noticed that one of it's feet were curled and one was not. I picked her up and she did not try to move. I tried to stand her and she just fell over. She would also not drink water. I looked very closly and could not find any marks or blood anywhere. I called a neighbor who also raises chickens and he came over and said that she probably just picked up a disease and recommended to just be merciful and not to get her around the other hens. Well, there was no way I could it, so he took her for me. Any ideas anyone? My daughter is going to be crushed...

 

[Karrie13]

I am sorry for your loss. Hopefully someone will be on here soon that can give you some advice.

 

[SurprisingWoman]

The second sticky on this forum has a bunch of questions that will be helpful if you can answer them. Hopefully someone can help figure out what is wrong.

 

[nnbreeder]

Have they had any access to wet feed or maybe a compost pile or something like that?

It really sounds like botulism or poisoning of some type. Was she limp or rigid? If she was limp I would think botulism.