One of my hens died yesterday, during the day. In the morning, she was still alive and fine, in the afternoon, dead. She was 2 years old and a full size chicken, no Bantam.
I found her wedged into a hard to access corner of the run. The other hens were alright.
She was lying on her side in a twisted position, her head jammed in tightly between the fence and a rock, and half underneath the fence. I noticed that her legs, feet and toes were stretched out straight, not curled up as one often sees in dead birds.
Pulling her out was very difficult, her head was jammed in so tightly.
When I finally had her out, I saw that she had a wound at the back of her neck near the head and her neck seemed broken.
I'm not sure if that was a deadly bite from a predator or if I broke her neck when pulling her out and the skin got rubbed off on the rock or something. There were no other wounds.
Could it be that she strangulated herself when reaching under the fence for a tasty bug or something? Or was it a predator that bit her neck and tried to pull her through the fence and then gave up?
We are in Israel, that means we have no raccoons or possums or something like that. There are supposed to be weasels and rats, though I've never seen any in our garden. We've got a plague of hyraxes (rock badgers) but they are supposed to be vegetarians and anyway too big to get into the run or coop.
I found her wedged into a hard to access corner of the run. The other hens were alright.
She was lying on her side in a twisted position, her head jammed in tightly between the fence and a rock, and half underneath the fence. I noticed that her legs, feet and toes were stretched out straight, not curled up as one often sees in dead birds.
Pulling her out was very difficult, her head was jammed in so tightly.
When I finally had her out, I saw that she had a wound at the back of her neck near the head and her neck seemed broken.
I'm not sure if that was a deadly bite from a predator or if I broke her neck when pulling her out and the skin got rubbed off on the rock or something. There were no other wounds.
Could it be that she strangulated herself when reaching under the fence for a tasty bug or something? Or was it a predator that bit her neck and tried to pull her through the fence and then gave up?
We are in Israel, that means we have no raccoons or possums or something like that. There are supposed to be weasels and rats, though I've never seen any in our garden. We've got a plague of hyraxes (rock badgers) but they are supposed to be vegetarians and anyway too big to get into the run or coop.
