Need advice, please!!

[chickeli]

Hi! I have a pen with a mother hen and her 5 chickens, who are 6 months old. They got along just fine, but today I found one of the chickens dead. No marks, no blood, nothing. I let them out of the pen to graze with my free-ranging flock of 1 rooster, two hens and one of the siblings they pecked at in the pen that I had to separate so they wouldn't kill it. Now I have found another dead 6 month old in the yard. No marks, nothing. Any ideas? Thanks...

 

[realsis]

Without any symptoms its really difficult to pin point exactly what happened? I'm so very sorry for your losses. Did you notice anything at all unusual before the deaths? Anything at all that might give a clue as to what happened? Were they laying and behaving as normal before?

 

[chickeli]

Hi Realsis,
Yes, everything was just normal. Could the mother or the strongest chicken have killed them? I now separated the mother and am looking at the three remaining chicks and they are also acting normal...