City Farmer Jim
Crowing
Without sounding to morbid what happens to an "older chicken" when they reach end days. Here's why I ask...we just lost a hen that is 7 ish she. We live in south Texas and she has seen a lot, from a 7 day stretch of no power and below freezing, to nearly the same the following year(both times in February) to 98 plus temperature for 6 months to the loss of flock mates of 1 to 2 a year until she died today for no reason I can find...we have had 2 girls with "sour crop" and 1 that was "egg bound" die from her original flock so I know what to look for in that area...she started to move slower than normal on Saturday but I didn't think much about it but each day was a little slower. She missed the "automatic door" Monday. We have a pesky "posom" that tried to get a free meal of her but we stopped it and she only lost a few tail feathers and no blood was shed an she continued down hill from there...she would eat and drink(not a lot) and was moving from place to place throughout the day until this afternoon when I found her slumped over and had died. Is what she did a natural death process for chickens? I at a loss to figure out why....HOWEVER the only thing that was different is the color of her comb it was almost a Maroon color and not the normal red she always had. She was a silver laced Wyandotte. Thank you for any insight you can offer. The rest of the 7 birds are normal as usual and no issues with them...