We lost a foster chicken today... I'm not sure what happened. Yesterday I noticed a poop in the chicken tractor that had a bit of blood in it but everyone looked fine so I had no idea who it came from. This morning I noticed the RIR roo (sorry @speney
!) had a little bit of a dirty butt, but he looked and acted fine otherwise. I even spent some time in the tractor with the birds this morning, working on petting them and hand-feeding them and he seemed just fine. I went down this afternoon when the kids got off the bus and he was dead in the middle of the run

His head/neck was arched back but I couldn't see any injuries. No lice or other parasites that I could see. The back of his neck was plucked, but I'm guessing that happened post-mortem by his former friends - there weren't any injuries on his neck. His comb looked weird, like the color was drained out of it.
The only thing I could think of is that hubs spread some DE in all the chicken areas a few days ago and he isn't very careful about not making a big cloud of it in the air. They would have breathed it in when he spread it down and some got in their waterer but settled to the bottom. Could that have affected them? Any other reason a chicken would get blood in their poop and drop dead the next day??? I'm hoping we aren't looking at anything that could spread to the other chickens. ***And sorry about your roo @speney
, if it is an illness it's probably better that it happened here while they are quarantined in a tractor.