R.I.P. PigPile - What Happened?

[stokealini]

PigPile was a Welsummer hatched last March. She started laying in August, and stopped in October. She was given her name because she was always at the bottom of the pile of chicks. Right about when she stopped laying, it started getting dark earlier and pretty cold at night. We guessed she stopped laying because of those things. She also started wandering around alone, and looking very 'puffed up', as if she were cold and were fluffing her feathers up. We never noticed any strange poops or other symptoms. A couple of days before she died, she stopped leaving the coop, and the last time I picked her up, she was light as a feather. She didn't look smaller than the others, but there was no bulk to her at all. And then one day later she was dead.

So.... 1. What should we have done differently, and 2. What could it have been? Thanks!

 

[RoostersCrow HensDeliver!]

She was very little weight to her? Sounds like she wasn't eating. Maybe she had gotten impacted crop or sour crop? I lost my 16 week old RIR roo to sour crop, he too was very thin.

 

[stokealini]

Yes, very little weight to her at all. I did see her peck at a couple of berries on the ground a couple of days earlier but not nearly as enthusiastically as her sisters. How would one diagnose sour or impacted crop? Could it go on for a month?

 

[RoostersCrow HensDeliver!]

I've heard of some birds being treated for 6 months with sour crop. The are crop balloons up with gas and nasty liquid that you have to puke out of them. Impacted crop is when something gets stuck in there and blocks it. Both prevents them from eating.