Hen died suddenly this morning and I don’t know why!

[stardustdaydreams]

Hey everyone,

My beautiful Buff Orpington Buttercup died this morning and I’m at a loss. She was in wonderful health yesterday, bright red comb, eating and drinking, very social, in a good mood.

I came out this morning to the coop to find her in the nesting box and it was devastating. She was in the nesting box, her comb was dark purple, and she was violently shaking all over. I didn’t know what to do! I tried calling the local vet and got no answer.

I went to the house and came back a few minutes later, and she was keeled over and dead. I’ve been so sad and crying all day. I really just don’t know what happened!

Her sister Pumpkin died a month prior, we’d taken her to the vet and they’d diagnosed her with ovarian masses and suggested we put her down. Could this be what killed Buttercup too?

My boyfriend felt Buttercups abdomen and body after she died and all he could feel was a slight bump inside of her, nearby the ovaries. Not an egg. He said her stomach seemed swollen. Ascites maybe? I’m just devastated that two of my beautiful sweet golden girls have died and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Does anyone have any insight?

 

[azygous]

I understand how devastating this is for you. In the nearly 20 years of keeping a flock, this has happened to me on occasion. The conflicting emotions can feel like a tree falling on your house.

When a hen that is an active layer dies suddenly on the nest, it can be from sudden death syndrome. This is caused by a low blood calcium condition. What happens is the hen is in the process of laying an egg when the shell gland suddenly runs out of adequate calcium to build a shell. So her body draws on her blood calcium.

Since her heart requires a certain level of calcium to keep her heart beating, this sudden drop in calcium can trigger a heart attack. Very likely you peeked in on her in the nest just as her heart was struggling to find enough calcium to keep beating.

Related to this is egg binding. Low calcium can also cause an egg to egg to get stuck. But death from this condition isn't usually sudden, not to say we can rule this out.

Another condition is internal laying. This is a condition where yolks start down the oviduct, but due to stress factors, they reverse direction and pop out of the top of the oviduct and end up down in the abdominal cavity. This can be a chronic condition or it can kill suddenly. I had a hen just under a year old die suddenly of this.

If you have the stomach for it, you can do a necropsy, cutting her open to see if any of these conditions are present. It could put closure to this very upsetting episode and you can learn from it.