My Hen suddenly 'kicked the bucket'.

[Castaway]

My 9 year old daughter just informed me that one of our 11 month old hens just up and died. We noticed no unusual behavior over the past few days, or even hours before its demise. We did get a lot of rain yesterday and it was cold. I'm wondering if "Bebe" came down with pneumonia because of the damp conditions in the coop. But that seems a bit too fast. Anyone have thoughts about this or similar experience?

 

[gritsar]

I'm sorry for your loss. The one hen I lost in literally minutes apparently died of a heart attack; pretty common in chickens from what I'm told.

 

[Kung Foo Chicken]

Maybe ammonia buildup in the coop? Sorry for your loss.

 

[BlackBart]

Sorry for your loss.

My young black Cochin hen was fine when I put her to bed but when I opened the door in the morning she was dead on the floor. Never any sign of illness.
My young Silver Laced Wyandotte Roo loved to run up to me to get petted. One day he ran up, fell over, jerked a few times and was dead.
I was in shock.

both very sad days.

 

[tammyd57]

I'm sorry for your loss.
You probably would have noticed symptoms of pneumonia before it became fatal.
Sudden chicken death happens with no explanation--possibly heart--maybe aneurism--with no noticeable symptoms or illness beforehand.

 

[averytds]

Sorry about your girl. We've had it happen too. Nothing noticeable, no other losses, it just happens sometimes.

 

[Tala]

My chicken up and kicked the bucket during wet and cold weather and the lab tests came back Fowl Cholera. He was up at noon pecking for BOSS with the others, then I found him lying in the mud in the run around 3pm and he died sometime after midnight.

 

[Castaway]

Thank you all for your condolences. My daughter was a little shaken by the discovery. I wasn't home.

Tala,

What is fowl cholera? I know what cholera is generally speaking, but is fowl cholera the same thing. If so, I wonder why your other chickens weren't affected.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

I had a 5 month old hen up and kick the bucket one day. I found her dead under the roosts, we reckon she had a heart attack...

 

[Tala]

Quote:
I'm not entirely sure. It's a bacterial infection. Mine died when his heart became infected. If you google around you will see that sometimes the only symptom is suddenly finding dead birds

You'd have to send the body off for testing to know for sure. In AR the veterinary diangostic lab in Little Rock will test a backyard chicken for free. I don't live that far from LR so that was nice.