Is there anything wrong with one of my girls?

[CradG]

Thank you for posting. I still have no idea what was the issue with our Donna girl. She ate and acted the same as the others until new years eve when she started being pretty lethargic. Brought her in the house to try to nurse her back to health but she died on new years day, right around her first birthday. Still dont know what was wrong with her but she never laid an egg. Bothers me that I dont know.

 

[rebrascora]

I'm so sorry that you lost her and especially on New Years Day.
Unfortunately there is no way we will ever know for sure, since you didn't get a necropsy done but my guess would be that she had a slow crop or crop impaction probably due to binging on that grass and it eventually caused her to starve to death.
You say in your original post that she felt lighter than the others and her crop was large which would indicate that. Not laying any eggs would be because she was not getting enough nutrients through her system to produce eggs.... I believe her crop will have been full of a soggy mass of tangled grass which was plugging the outlet from her crop and stopping food from getting into her digestive system..... but we will never know.

 

[Mrs. K]

Probably a genetic defect. Not anything you could do about it. Sometimes this happens, and while the chick is small, the body can keep up in spite of the defect. As the bird becomes full grown, it can no longer keep up, and the bird eventually dies.

There is nothing you could do about it. Chickens often times are not real long lived. No need to feel guilty. I would never get a necropsy unless all at once several birds were going down.

Mrs K

 

[CradG]

Thank you. Good to know. The other hens are still doing great other than a rehaul in the pecking order so it does not seem like it was anything contagious.