Please look at these pictures and help us.

[bearz]

One of my son's chickens died a few days ago. This is what he found when he was taking her out of the coop. We have no idea what this is and we need the experts here to diagnose it. The bumps are the size of peas.

 

[nipper75]

What area of the chicken is that? That looks awful! Poor thing

 

[snowflake]

I have never seen anything like that, some kid of parasite? could you send her to a vet for necropsy? if you have other hens I would check them over VERY well

 

[bearz]

The pictures are from the chest, but it was all over.

 

[Eggsoteric]

Any other symptoms prior to her death? Breed?

 

[dawg53]

It could possibly be the Cutaneous form of Marek's disease. Here's a link, scroll slowly down to Marek's disease.
http://www.fao-ectad-gaborone.org/en/IMG/pdf/Picture_Book.pdf

 

[Michael Apple]

Perhaps those could be feather cysts that became infected. I see a maggot crawling among the feathers. Take a look at some of this info:
http://www.avianweb.com/feathercysts.html
I've never had that problem before.

 

[dawg53]

I thought about some type of skin dermatitis, but I'm not so sure. I've never dealt with anything like it neither.

 

[Island Roo]

What about predator?
It looks a bit like a chicken that was licked to death (dog?)

 

[bearz]

No predators. Locked coop. Prior to dying my son said she was just failing and he didn't know why. He has over 30 chickens so he didn't notice it until just before she died. Yes, I thought that looked like a maggot too but I don't know how since it's the middle of winter here yet and maggots come from flies, right? It's possible she was dead in the coop for up to 24 hours since he just goes in there once a day do to chores and check on them.

There have been no outside influences (new chckens) in the coop since August and he hasn't been in any other coops to pick up anything.

I'll have him check over the other chickens closer tomorrow.