Yesterday around lunchtime I noticed that Moxie wasn't hanging out with the other chickens, she was instead just laying down underneath a rosebush breathing heavily. She let me pet her which she never does, so I figured something was wrong. I tried to give her some bread and water just to see if she'd eat/drink, she wouldn't. I kept an eye on her and noticed that she couldn't walk, she seemed to kind of scoot a few inches on her elbows if she absolutely had to move. I picked her up and checked for signs of egg binding or anything else that I could see/feel and she seemed physically normal. Her eyes looked clear and bright, no discharge, blockages, lumps, hardnesses etc. Within 3 hours she was dead.
She was an 11 month old EE that never laid a normal egg, the only egg that she *might* have laid was this bizarre one I found in the yard:
Does anyone have any ideas what might have done it? There isn't really a place here in Phoenix that I know of that would do a chicken necropsy, and I wasn't anxious to spend a bunch of money on something that wouldn't bring her back anyway. The only ideas I could come up with are that maybe as a non-laying hen eating layer pellets she eventually got poisoned by eating too much calcium? Or that maybe she had some birth defect all along that prevented her from laying as well as contributing to her early death. Maybe she found something sharp that made her bleed internally? I don't think she was poisoned by anything in the yard, all the other chickens seem to be just fine and I looked around for anything dangerous or suspicious. It seemed to happen very quickly though, any thoughts on the matter are welcome, even though I'll likely never know for sure.
Rachel.
She was an 11 month old EE that never laid a normal egg, the only egg that she *might* have laid was this bizarre one I found in the yard:
Does anyone have any ideas what might have done it? There isn't really a place here in Phoenix that I know of that would do a chicken necropsy, and I wasn't anxious to spend a bunch of money on something that wouldn't bring her back anyway. The only ideas I could come up with are that maybe as a non-laying hen eating layer pellets she eventually got poisoned by eating too much calcium? Or that maybe she had some birth defect all along that prevented her from laying as well as contributing to her early death. Maybe she found something sharp that made her bleed internally? I don't think she was poisoned by anything in the yard, all the other chickens seem to be just fine and I looked around for anything dangerous or suspicious. It seemed to happen very quickly though, any thoughts on the matter are welcome, even though I'll likely never know for sure.
Rachel.
