Help.....sick chicken????

[rpjp96]

I am very new to chicken raising. I bought 7 chicks at the end of march. Well me and my daughters couldn't wait for eggs so we went to an auction and bought a laying hen and what I thought was 2 other laying hens but they are still peeping. We have had them for a week and they were separated from the baby's. The laying hen took a week and then we started gettng eggs she would lay every other day. We received 11 eggs from her. She is some type of Bantam. Well she stopped laying a week ago and I noticed she really wasn't coming out of the coop much and I also noticed she seemed to be breathing heavy and i noticed she seemed to sneeze once. I thought maybe because of the hot weather. Well I went down this morning to check on her and she was laying dead! I have no idea what could have caused this. Should I be concerned for the rest of the chickens? I did open the baby's coop and they would mingle in the yard together but they would sleep separate from the one that died. Any input would be appreciated.

 

[realsis]

I'm so sorry for your loss! there is very little to go by but a have a couple of guesses. first guess would be a sort of respiratory illness. second guess would be a egg binding. I'm leaning toward the egg binding guess because she stayed in her nest and had not been laying. the heavy breathing could have been her trying to pass the egg. you haven't listed a lot of symptoms but my guess is one of those two issues. again I'm very sorry for your loss! hope this helps .

 

[rpjp96]

Thank you for your input but can I ask what is egg binding? She wasn't in her nest box just in the coop in general. I am so afraid that if she had some type of disease or something and if my other chickens will get it. When my husband gets home we are going to completely clean the coop out and clean it as much as possible. I just don't know what else to do.