She was a 13 month old Buff Orpington. I got her when she was about a week old from a local farmer who gets his chicks from a hatchery. The chicks were vaccinated. I feed organic layer crumble and feed a handful of corn and sunflower seeds twice a day as a treat, along with occasional yogurt, veggies, fruit, bread, etc. They have grit and oyster shell available free choice. They get let out at about 6:30 every morning and have free range of the backyard all day until they go to bed. I let the girls out of their coop at about 6:30 a.m. today and Sunny was laying on the floor of the coop with her beak open and seemed to be breathing hard. She wouldn't leave the coop and went and sat in the nestbox when one of the other chickens left it. I brought her into the house to examine her. No wounds, no discharge, mouth and throat clear. I noticed her legs seemed a little pale - they are normally a pinkish white color and they looked completely white. I checked her for parasites and didn't see any sign of them. Her vent was clear, no discharge. Her abdomen seemed like it may have been a little distended though so I let her soak in warm water for a while thinking she might be eggbound, although I didn't feel any egg. She just sat there with her eyes closed. I wrapped her in a towel and lubricated her vent with mineral oil. I placed her in the bathtub on a towel with a dish of water, sunflower seeds and some mashed hardboiled egg with yogurt mixed in. She would not eat or drink anything. I thought maybe she had fluid buildup in her abdomen so I went to try to find a needle to drain it and when I went back into the bathroom she was dead. She died within two hours from the time I found her in the morning. She acted perfectly fine yesterday so this was a complete shock. After she was gone I tried to see if I could drain any fluid from her abdomen but I don't think the needle I used was long enough. Only a tiny bit of watery red fluid came out - the rest of what was in the syringe was air. Any thought on what might have gone wrong with my poor girl?
