my chickens are dying

[bigtim68]

first one was lying in the opening to the hen house and second was lying in the nest box, no visible injuries, they are 1yr old ri reds, i dissected both to see if there was anything obvious, yes i wore disposable gloves. one hardly had any yokes forming and one had several sacs and a soft shell near the vent, there was a lot of fat in the abdominal cavity, otherwise everything looked normal, ( btw) they are all about 8 lbs each, could i be feeding them too much? could it be a disease? i get layer pellets and crushed oyster shells at our feed store, do they need another type of grit as well? they have a 10'x10' enclosed run and hen house and their feeder gets filled daily and they have plenty of clean water, i had 6, one got pecked to death and the other 2 , just outright died yesterday, a month after the other. do i need to clean up everything and start over? Help!!!

 

[NHchicks]

So sorry, bigtime! I had one 2 yr. old hen die this morning, she had been lethargic, but I don't know why. I hope there hasn't been an increase in chicken mortality, otherwise I might get a little paranoid...

 

[welasharon]

I would go ahead and rule out the two most frequent problems: 1-mites/lice-check the birds near their vents and under the wings and if they have crests look there too and dust with seven dust if you see any 2-sonsider worming them. Just from reading this forum it appears these two seem to be the most prevalent problems and are not overly obvious unless you look.
sharon