Found 2 hens dead yesterday

[Phoenix2015]

I don't know what happened, but my guess is that I have a mean rooster. With my last batch of bird purchases I have gotten more roos than hens - I just want the hens, I plan to put the roos in a separate pen, but my husband bought ducks and they are currently in the pen that we had setup for the Roos. So I have corralled all of the Roos into a section of my coop under the hen house that I have labeled Chick Nursery just to keep them separate from the rest. The 2 hens that I found dead were bought all at the same time as the roosters so I am not sure why they killed them. They are about 4.5 months old. I have 6 older Hens that are about 14 months old. Now all of my hens want to stay in the house rather than roam the yard. So I am hoping that separating them calms down the hens.

What causes a Rooster to kill?

 

[Egghead_Jr]

I don't think it was the male birds. Were there pecking marks to the point of death or did you just find the birds dead one morning? Weasels can get into very small places and will take multiple birds in a night by small nearly unnoticeable wound on neck. Another possibility is heat exhaustion. Did those birds happen to be black? Over the years I've lost one bird to heat and she was all black.

It just doesn't make sense to me that males are killing females. If there is any serious problem due to overstocking of birds, especially males with females, is males attack one another.

 

[Phoenix2015]

The hens were black and white (one was a Barred Rock the other was a Wyandotte) There were no noticeable marks on either of them they were just dead (I did not inspect them a whole lot because they were really stiff when I found them) I found the first one just after 5 pm (I checked for others at that time and did not see any more dead) and the other after 8 pm. My chicken coop is under trees, but we are having some very HOT weather right now in FL so I guess it could be heat. I make sure that they have lots of water, I check the water's daily.There really is no way for a weasel to get into the coop. We have it double wrapped, Poultry wire with heavier gauge fencing over top of the chicken wire. and a foot of wire laying flat around the coop. I have visibly seen my BR Roos being violent with the other birds, that is why I thought that it was the Roos. I am ruling it out by separating them.

We are starting a duck coop this weekend so that soon I will have the other coop available to separate out the Roos from the Hens. The only reason I am keeping the Roos is for meat. They are getting to the size now where I think that they will go in the Freezer soon.