Dead chicken

[Farmer jr]

I found one of my Rhode Island Red hens dead this winter I found her under my goat stand she was already dead when I found her and she had a yellow foam coming out of her mouth I have no clue what killed her options will be appreciated

 

[danceswithronin]

Do you put down any kind of ant killer or poison bait?

 

[Ebony Rose]

I did a google search for "foam in mouth of death chicken" and found a posting from some 9 years ago where someone thought it could be aspergillosis, a fungal disease of the respiratory system which can invade the lungs and air sacs. It is caused by the bird breathing in the spores of aspergillus fumigatus, which is common in damp or moldy hay, chaff, straw, seeds, bread, with advanced infection, the respiratory passages and air sac become filled with a yellow, cheese-like pus that seriously interferes with the birds breathing. For lung and air sac aspergillosis, ketoconazole is often delivered through nebulization (aerosol therapy) or by injection into a muscle or directly into the bloodstream.

 

[Farmer jr]

Well I do feed them a lot of moldy and hard bread so could that have caused it and I don’t put any bait or poison out because of that reason if it was the bread then I’m not giving them anymore of it

 

[danceswithronin]

Well I do feed them a lot of moldy and hard bread so could that have caused it and I don’t put any bait or poison out because of that reason if it was the bread then I’m not giving them anymore of it

Yeah definitely don't give your birds moldy bread or feed, it can cause fungus-related illness for sure.

 

[Farmer jr]

Ok so no more scrounging moldy bread from me any more then

 

[Ebony Rose]

You can still offer the occasional slice of fresh bread They really shouldn't eat anything that's moldy.

 

[nightowl223]

You can still offer the occasional slice of fresh bread They really shouldn't eat anything that's moldy.

Exactly - and that includes fruits or veggies, too. I always toss my scraps out to the compost pile, and they get eaten long before they get moldy, but if they were to get moldy, I would bury them in the compost down deeper than they dig.

 

[nightowl223]

Well I do feed them a lot of moldy and hard bread so could that have caused it and I don’t put any bait or poison out because of that reason if it was the bread then I’m not giving them anymore of it

You have to be sure not to blame yourself for the mistake, though, since you didn't know you were endangering them. Having chickens is a learning curve, and even us oldsters that "know it all" often discover we were clueless about one thing or another! We can't blame ourselves for losses we didn't deliberately cause, any more than we could blame ourselves for a hurricane or tornado. Having birds means you WILL have losses, one way or another. I just had a loss today, in fact, with a bird that I thought was healing wonderfully from a serious injury. However, she was getting close to laying age, and it's possible there was something wrong with her egg-laying process somewhere. Again, something I couldn't control, as there were no symptoms. We just can't beat ourselves up for not knowing everything.

 

[Farmer jr]

Ok I am still sorry because it happened to my best laying hen RIP copper