Dead chicken

[lizcourt]

If you guys saw my last post a few weeks ago, you know I just started raising chickens. This morning I went to go feed and water my chickens before work and I found one of my older ones dead. Shes anywhere from a year to a year and a half. My coop is definitely not predator proof 100% but there were no signs of anything that entered and all the other chickens are fine. There are no scratches or blood or feathers or anything. She was just laying on her side dead this morning and I’m almost positive she didn’t have any kind of sickness. Any ideas?

 

[ChicNmom]

She obviously had some kind of problem whether you could see it or not. They are good at hiding health problems.

If you really want to know then you should refrigerate her and send her for a necropsy.

I had a younger hen just drop dead in my yard a few years ago.

The necropsy showed she had a liver hemorrhage.
Fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome, characterized by sudden death in overconditioned hens due to hepatic rupture and hemorrhage, is one of the leading noninfectious idiopathic causes of mortality in backyard chickens. Nutritional, genetic, environmental, and hormonal factors, or combinations of these, have been proposed yet not proven as the underlying cause.

Unless you saw something, anything to give us a clue, weird poop, acting off etc, then none of us will be able to guess why your hen dropped dead.

 

[lizcourt]

She obviously had some kind of problem whether you could see it or not. They are good at hiding health problems.

If you really want to know then you should refrigerate her and send her for a necropsy.

I had a younger hen just drop dead in my yard a few years ago.

The necropsy showed she had a liver hemorrhage.
Fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome, characterized by sudden death in overconditioned hens due to hepatic rupture and hemorrhage, is one of the leading noninfectious idiopathic causes of mortality in backyard chickens. Nutritional, genetic, environmental, and hormonal factors, or combinations of these, have been proposed yet not proven as the underlying cause.

Unless you saw something, anything to give us a clue, weird poop, acting off etc, then none of us will be able to guess why your hen dropped dead.

I’ve only had her about two weeks, someone was giving her and three other hens away, I kept them separate from the rest of my flock but from what I saw she wasn’t acting off and her poops were normal. And the other three hens she came with also seem fine. I was actually going to start introducing them into my other flock but now I’m kinda worried that the other hens have something that I can’t see.