About three weeks ago, my 1.5 year old New Hampshire Red started withdrawing. I noticed she was staying in a corner away from everyone and contracting her vent over and over. She also had poop all over her butt. I thought that she was definitely egg bound so we soaked her in epsom salt, gave Tums, and spent an hour cleaning her feathers. We wrapped her up to dry and sat her in a cage in the house for the day. She honestly seemed a little better the next evening, so (regrettably) I let her go back out with her flock. She seemed to be eating and drinking so we decided to let her go back to her normal routine and she went in the coop that night with everyone else. She died that night..Just fell off the roost and died. I just wanted opinions because I just found these videos and pictures of how she was acting while she was sick.
After she died, I was watching the 16 other chickens very closely and they were not showing ANY signs of being sick, so I let it go and decided it was definitely the egg being stuck that killed her.
Then, two days later our bantam Brahma died. Only, she wasn’t sick at all like the first one was. Around 4pm I let them out to free range a little bit before bed (like I do everyday) and she was just in the nesting box, dead with no egg under her, as if she was trying to lay and died. One thing she did have going on that was different was she laid a soft shell egg a day or two before she died. It didn’t really alarm me much because it just hit springtime in Texas and it was her first egg in a long time. I have a camera in the coop so I know who lays daily and who doesn’t and she didn’t lay nearly all winter. I did not check both of them over inside and out after they died, I wish I would have but I couldn’t stomach it. They were two of our very first hens, so they were special to our family. We just buried them and that was it.
It’s been almost two weeks since the bantam died.. and it really is bothering me that these two died so close to each other. I’d like to think it was a coincidence but I don’t know.
They get free choice oyster shells. Usually they eat Dumor layer feed (free choice) but in January I wanted to try something new and had been feeding them Nature’s Best Organic Layer Crumbles. I know logically it probably had nothing to do with the feed but I got paranoid while trying to rule different things out lol so I switched them back to Dumor after the two died. They also get scratch a few times a week too. No one is currently sick or acting off. They seem to have recovered from losing the two hens and are happy again. The pictures are of the first hen the Day I found her withdrawn and dirty. I had a video of how she was contracting her vent but idk how to upload videos. Anyways thank you for reading! Just trying to get some ideas in case there’s something I need to be worried about.
After she died, I was watching the 16 other chickens very closely and they were not showing ANY signs of being sick, so I let it go and decided it was definitely the egg being stuck that killed her.
Then, two days later our bantam Brahma died. Only, she wasn’t sick at all like the first one was. Around 4pm I let them out to free range a little bit before bed (like I do everyday) and she was just in the nesting box, dead with no egg under her, as if she was trying to lay and died. One thing she did have going on that was different was she laid a soft shell egg a day or two before she died. It didn’t really alarm me much because it just hit springtime in Texas and it was her first egg in a long time. I have a camera in the coop so I know who lays daily and who doesn’t and she didn’t lay nearly all winter. I did not check both of them over inside and out after they died, I wish I would have but I couldn’t stomach it. They were two of our very first hens, so they were special to our family. We just buried them and that was it.
It’s been almost two weeks since the bantam died.. and it really is bothering me that these two died so close to each other. I’d like to think it was a coincidence but I don’t know.
They get free choice oyster shells. Usually they eat Dumor layer feed (free choice) but in January I wanted to try something new and had been feeding them Nature’s Best Organic Layer Crumbles. I know logically it probably had nothing to do with the feed but I got paranoid while trying to rule different things out lol so I switched them back to Dumor after the two died. They also get scratch a few times a week too. No one is currently sick or acting off. They seem to have recovered from losing the two hens and are happy again. The pictures are of the first hen the Day I found her withdrawn and dirty. I had a video of how she was contracting her vent but idk how to upload videos. Anyways thank you for reading! Just trying to get some ideas in case there’s something I need to be worried about.
