found dead bird in coop........now what?

[uncle rico]

a few days ago I went out to the coop to feed the birds and open up for the day. Found one of the hens slouched in a corner, mostly unresponsive. Couldn't stand up, and her eyes kept drooping shut. There was no evidence of a predator attack. I checked her vent, and it seemed OK. I saw no wounds or discolorations, etc. Basically nothing to indicate illness. She was one of the top hens in the peck order, and was well fed.

So I seperated her from the rest of the flock and set the hen up in a box with water & feed. A few hours later I check and it was dead

. any idea what caused this? If other chickens start dropping dead I know I'll have a problem on my hands. So far all the others look perfectly healthy........they're all the same age, about 1.5 yrs old, and there's no peck order fighting or anything like that.

 

[klmclain1]

Guesses here...it could be something congenital. OR it could be she had some sort of parasite - probably internal like some sort of worms if you didn't notice anything externally. I'd keep a very close eye on the others. Oh... I just thought of something else.. is there possibly any moldy hay or feed around? Mold can contain botulism, as I understand, maybe it was something like that?

 

[dawg53]

There are basically 3 things that it could possibly be: Eggbound, lice/mites, worms, or any combination thereof.

 

[uncle rico]

I did use some hay as bedding in the nesting boxes a few weeks ago.....noticed some of it smelled a little funny but I figured it was OK. Maybe it was that? I threw that stuff out a few days ago, just to be sure. it was in a few of the boxes but there wasn't alot of it.

I checked the vent and didn't see an egg stuck in there, so it def wasn't eggbinding that killed this one.