Hi everyone! This is my first time raising chickens. We have 9 chickens 8 of which are 5 months old and one is 7 months old. I noticed today that they have watery diarrhea. We also had one hen pass away out of the blue about a week ago. She showed no signs of anything being wrong except she had stopped laying eggs for a few days, she was 7 months old.
I live in NC and it is still in the mid 80s during the day, so they could still be drinking a lot of water because of the heat, but I didn't notice this issue in the summer when it was even hotter. I feed them a layer feed that has 17% protein and supplement oyster shell for calcium separate from their food. I also give them about 4 cups of dried mealworms every 3 days because they act like they don't get enough protein. They free roam in the yard and eat a lot when they are out and I fed them a bunch of lettuce, peppers, cucumber about 3 days ago.
The hens that were laying about a month ago stopped for about a week until I added this extra protein. I still saw one of the non laying hens eat a feather today (which when I looked up said it could be from lack of protein). The 7 months old hen hasn't laid an egg in 4 days now. I am worried something is wrong.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Any recommendations? Are they sick or is there a dietary need I'm missing? Thanks!
I live in NC and it is still in the mid 80s during the day, so they could still be drinking a lot of water because of the heat, but I didn't notice this issue in the summer when it was even hotter. I feed them a layer feed that has 17% protein and supplement oyster shell for calcium separate from their food. I also give them about 4 cups of dried mealworms every 3 days because they act like they don't get enough protein. They free roam in the yard and eat a lot when they are out and I fed them a bunch of lettuce, peppers, cucumber about 3 days ago.
The hens that were laying about a month ago stopped for about a week until I added this extra protein. I still saw one of the non laying hens eat a feather today (which when I looked up said it could be from lack of protein). The 7 months old hen hasn't laid an egg in 4 days now. I am worried something is wrong.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Any recommendations? Are they sick or is there a dietary need I'm missing? Thanks!
