Dead leghorn!

[MickeysChicks]

Help! Not sure what happened, but when we got home this evening the first thing we did was go check the coop and found a dead leghorn in the coop. All 14 girls had been out free ranging today while we were at work. It's a large fenced in wooded back yard. All the girls were their usual vocal and animated selves this morning. In fact the last 5 days we've been getting full production from all seven Leghorns, its the 7 Rsl's that have been slacking off at around 5 to 6 eggs a day. Today we had 6 brown eggs and 5 white.

The dead leghorn was cold and limp. The comb and wattle were almost white. I could not see any blood or obvious signs of injury. But it was getting dark and it was raining, and I was trying to roundup the rest of the chickens, get them fed,watered and collect eggs and deal with a slightly upset 9 year old! The rest of the girls did not seem upset or nervous.

If she was sick, wouldn't we have seen some signs before this? But if a predator had attacked her wouldn't I have seen some sort of injury?

 

[Firekin1]

As with humans, chickens can suddenly drop dead as well. Heart attacks, aneurysms, strokes....if no one seems ill or are showing signs of any illness, injury, or predator attack then perhaps it was just "one of those things". Sorry for your loss. If it suddenly starts happening to others though, I'd worry.

 

[MickeysChicks]

The other girls seem fine! After reading several other posts I realized that I had been seeing some evidence of diarrhea the last couple of days, so I went down to Tractor Supply and talked with "the chicken lady". She said this time of year with the weather changing sometimes the girls could use a little help. So we added some electrolytes to their water container and then to be on the safe side we're going to add some antibiotics to their water tomorrow. She recommended just tossing any eggs we harvest for a couple of days after the antibiotics , and hopefully the diarrhea will clear up!