Found my first dead chicken this morning

[nicolevg]

I found my first dead hen this morning when I went to go check for eggs and give some treats (broccoli stalks). She was one of our olive eggers & honestly was the dumbest bird we have. (Both our olive eggers are. We only have 2 of them. We also have 4 Ameraucanas and 4 Buff Orpingtons). We recently put in a new watering system along with new feeders: PVC pipe chicken feeders with 4-5 days forth of food & a pipe of oyster shells for them to peck at as needed, and some of those watering cups hooked up to a 5 gallon barrel of water with 4-5 days worth of water. We were away this weekend for 2 nights & came back and the chickens all seemed fine. It's been in the 90s-102 all week here, so I'm thinking she may have died of thirst or heat stroke because she was too stupid to figure out how to get more water (none of our other 9 hens seem to have that problem, though some are definitely more intelligent than others and more adept at pushing the yellow nozzle so more water comes from the spout into the red cup). I don't think it was the temperature of the coop at night, as it gets down into the 60s at night and the coop is very well ventilated. That or she was hen pecked to death cuz she and one of the Ameraucanas are at the bottom of the pecking order. She's still lying in the coop on the floor where I found her, so I haven't checked for hen pecking yet, though I didn't see any blood or open wounds or sores when I saw her. Looks like she died sometime in the night & fell off her roost. (When my girls do peck at each other, it's not at night or in the coop. It's due to their boredom and lack of run space, which we're in the process of expanding. I also try to let them free range around our property for 2-8 hours a day, which I've noticed has been helping a lot with them pecking each other.) I don't want to touch her or take her out myself in case she has a disease, as I'm currently pregnant. I'm waiting for my husband to do that when he gets home from work in several hours.
1) How do I know her cause of death?
2) How do I assess the health of the rest of the flock? All other 9 birds seem to be acting like their normal selves. I didn't notice anything different in her other than that she was sitting a lot in the dust yesterday when I let them free range. Then again, she's done that in the past... really, she's done that ever since we got her. She's always been a very mellow bird who prefers to lay out in the dust as much as possible and just sit there.) I just thought that was her personality. We bought them at 1 year old from a local chicken raiser 2 months ago. They all seemed to be in good enough health when we received them. Then again, this is the first flock I've ever owned so I don't exactly know the warning signs of illness.

What are some illnesses that would take months to develop in a 1 year old hen, and would cause her to be super chill personality-wise?

 

[All Ball]

You can send the corpse to UC Davis for a necropsy - they are very affordable. Have your husband put the chicken in plastic bagging in the fridge (NOT freezer) until you've got the packaging and materials filled out. You can most likely search "UC Davis chicken necropsy" to get the website with instructions and materials.

 

[nicolevg]

You can send the corpse to UC Davis for a necropsy - they are very affordable. Have your husband put the chicken in plastic bagging in the fridge (NOT freezer) until you've got the packaging and materials filled out. You can most likely search "UC Davis chicken necropsy" to get the website with instructions and materials.

Thanks! I’ll look into that.

 

[Briosafarm]

I'm sorry about your hen. There really is no way to know without a necropsy. I'm trying to figure out a way to say this nicely, but you refer to *her* as stupid for possibly not being able to figure out how to get water. Did you spend time teaching all of them to use the water cups and watch to be sure they all knew how and were drinking enough? It might also have been "smart" to leave multiple sources of water before leaving them alone during heat wave, since you know there's a tough pecking order in your flock.

 

[nicolevg]

I'm sorry about your hen. There really is no way to know without a necropsy. I'm trying to figure out a way to say this nicely, but you refer to *her* as stupid for possibly not being able to figure out how to get water. Did you spend time teaching all of them to use the water cups and watch to be sure they all knew how and were drinking enough? It might also have been "smart" to leave multiple sources of water before leaving them alone during heat wave, since you know there's a tough pecking order in your flock.

Yes, they all were drinking from the cups when we first introduced them, and we left the regular waterer in there for several days after just to make sure. (I’m not that much of a noob... at least I hope I'm not lol). Plus, we’d been using the water cups for a month with seemingly no problem before she died. If it was a water/feed issue, my guess is the other girls barred her from getting enough for whatever reason. Maybe she was the bottom of the pecking order; it was hard for me to tell if there was 1 specific bird who was at the bottom.

However, when I think back, she was always kinda sluggish off and on from the first week we got her, and all the girls were a year-ish old when we purchased them from a local lady. So maybe she was just genetically prone to becoming egg bound for whatever reason and I couldn’t tell 'cause I thought that was just her personality 'cause that’s how she was as long as I’d had her.

We ended up not getting a necropsy, but I’m fairly certain she died from being egg bound. In hindsight, she had most of the signs, so my guess is genetic/anatomical predisposition since I never noticed a poopy butt or anything that would block her from laying.