Did my chicken freeze to death or was it some other reason

[Nlchicken]

Went to the farmers coop today they didn't have any grit told me to use oyster shells. Not many places here that you can buy supplies guess I'm off to the beach

 

[Kale Chips]

Pardon my cluelessness but do you have something like Amazon where you can order it online? Oyster shell and grit are both necessary but also somewhat cheap...at least it is in the U.S. Another alternative is to crush up dried egg shells and feed them back to the chickens good luck on your search!

 

[Nlchicken]

Thanks for the suggestion I ordered some from amazon. I managed to scrape up a small bucket of sand and small pebbles to use until it gets here. Wasent easy everything here is frozen solid. It was like trying to dig up concrete lol.

 

[Wickedchicken6]

Thank you for the update. I'm glad you were able to source grit. You had mentioned that her crop felt almost empty. Following this diagnosis, I would have thought her crop would have been full. Would that mean that this impaction just occurred, or occurred abruptly?

Like the others, I haven't heard of the baking soda. So I went looking out of curiosity. Out of the articles, the first one does reference sodium bicarbonate produced by the pancreas with digestive juices. Could that be related to providing baking soda?

https://articles.extension.org/pages/65376/avian-digestive-system
The duodenum receives digestive enzymes and bicarbonate (to counter the hydrochloric acid from the proventriculus) from the pancreas and bile from the liver (via the gall bladder). The digestive juices produced by the pancreas are involved primarily in protein digestion. Bile is a detergent that is important in the digestion of lipids and the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K).

The two following links discuss the impaction of the gizzard.
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/diseaseinfo/76/impaction-and-foreign-bodies-of-gizzard/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4431150/

I thought the reference to cold weather in the link below, interesting.
https://www.beautyofbirds.com/blockedgizzard.html
"Cold spells are the most likely times for such birds to develop a blocked gizzard."

 

[Morrigan]

Thanks for reporting back. I had never heard of a blocked gizzard before. I had one young hen a few years ago that seemed fine one day, but was dead the next. I was brand new to chicken keeping, and chalked it up "stuff happens." I wonder now, if it was a blocked gizzard.

 

[Kiki]

Thanks for reporting back. I had never heard of a blocked gizzard before. I had one young hen a few years ago that seemed fine one day, but was dead the next. I was brand new to chicken keeping, and chalked it up "stuff happens." I wonder now, if it was a blocked gizzard.

Fatty liver disease can kill a perfectly normal looking/acting bird in a instant too.

 

[WindingRoad]

I just checked her crop it feels like it is almost empty. Would this suggest that she was sick and not eating? I have 2 feeders in the coop that we always keep full of 16% layer feed. Should I be feeding a higher % we also give them some black oil sunflower seeds.

Make sure to feed before bed. A full crop helps with keeping warm. All that digesting is work. And I feed scratch at bedtime and mealworms. She probably didn't freeze to death she was frozen when you found her but probably died from something else earlier and then froze. IMHO. Sorry for your loss. Just giving you ideas for your other birds.

 

[Kiki]

Make sure to feed before bed. A full crop helps with keeping warm. All that digesting is work. And I feed scratch at bedtime and mealworms. She probably didn't freeze to death she was frozen when you found her but probably died from something else earlier and then froze. IMHO. Sorry for your loss. Just giving you ideas for your other birds.

Keep reading.
There is an answer as to what happened.

 

[WindingRoad]

Keep reading.
There is an answer as to what happened.

Are you talking about impacted crop? An empty crop wouldn't signal an impacted crop to me. Sounds like she was not eating.

 

[Kiki]

So I just got the results from the necropsy and she passed away due to an impacted gizzard. They said this is common in younger birds and that I should place a bowl of baking soda in the coop to be available 24/7 along with the oyster shells and sand that they have already.

@WindingRoad
Impacted gizzard.