Sick chickens

[Realtorphillips]

Hello all.

I am writing because I am at a loss. A few weeks ago I went down to the run to let my hens out for the day and found one of our younger girls (5 months) laying dead in the corner with no signs of injury. A few days ago one of our hens started acting strange, laying around ALL of the time, wouldn’t eat and had to pick her up and put her in the coop at night. Finally I thought maybe she was egg bound and nothing I did helped so I took her to the vet yesterday. They said she didn’t have an egg but a mass and had cancer and we put her down. Now another one of my hens that I thought was molting because she’s had a lot of feather loss is acting in the same way but not as severe, laying around all day, not eating, but she had some horrible watery white diarrhea today and now her comb is pale. She did still put herself up in the coop tonight and is able to move around. What could be causing this illness? I find it hard to believe it could be something different effecting each one? Please help! Thank you!

 

[Realtorphillips]

I meant to say as well, the chicken that died yesterday was only a year and a half old and my other one that is sick now is the same. Also, we added on to their coop in July and went on vacation and had someone else watching them. Since we’ve been back egg production is way down amongst all of them and a lot of issues we attributed to the change in their coop and stress at first also from adding new chicks to the flock. But now I’m wondering if the lack of laying may also be attributed to this mystery illness?