Help!!!!

[joey7319]

Quote:
They have been free ranging for about three..maybe four months. About a week after they got here. It is very possible that a snake could have bitten her, they spend alot of time in the woods and under the raspberry bushes in our yard. We have copperheads, water mocasins, black widows, brown recluse and a number of other poisonus critters around here. A necropsy is out of the question as I have already burned her (possums, coons, foxes and bobcats are also abundant in our area and I'm not taking any chances that they get a wiff of a dead chicken). I have no idea what she died from. Other than the foot issue she did have a slightly mushy crop. So I think a sour crop may have done her in. But the toe does have me perplexed. Any idea what could have caused that?
Nikki

 

[Love my Critters!]

Very sorry to hear she didn't make it.

Could she have gotten too hot? Some of the laying aged hens can get overheated when it's hot and humid.

 

[Eggs4Sale]

We had a chicken that lost a toenail in a tussle with chicken wire. It had a brownish yucky thing there, whatever that was. We separated her because we were worried the other chickens would peck at her toe. It healed fine on it's own. Her toe now has a new toenail.

If your hen was doing fine one hour, and an hour later she's dying, it doesn't seem to have to do with the toe. Do chickens eat black widows and brown recluses? I don't know. Maybe she just showed up at the wrong place at the wrong time and stumbled across a venomous snake or spider that had babies and protected them. If you have kids, you might make sure there's not a pile of snakes under a raspberry bush.

 

[Uppity Peon]

Quote:
I heard a story about a chicken in Arizona that apparently died after eating a scorion. Apparently the scorpion was sallowed whole and alive. It stung the shicken to death and managed to make a hole in the crop and crawl out.

I have no idea how reliable the story is but thought I would just relay it as hearsay.

 

[LaSombra]

Quote:
I heard a story about a chicken in Arizona that apparently died after eating a scorion. Apparently the scorpion was sallowed whole and alive. It stung the shicken to death and managed to make a hole in the crop and crawl out.

I have no idea how reliable the story is but thought I would just relay it as hearsay.

oh wow, if that is true, that's just awful

 

[Janrhy]

I am so sorry to hear about your loss. That sucks, especially when you are close to the chickens. About the toenails, I doubt that had anything to do with it. We have many chickens without toenails. I never figured out what caused it, other than maybe because we got ours as chickes in Oct. and they were peeps thru the freezing months. Frostbite maybe? Regardless it doesn't affect them now, they have just learned how to live among us with a disability.

 

[kycklingmamma]

I am so sorry to hear about your loss, it so hard to loose them. I have lost three since I started the backyard chicken thing a year ago...it doesn't get any easier. You did what you could, no point in blaming yourself.