Sick hen and death

[Nmfensley94]

Hi there,

Kind of a shot in the dark but hoping someone might have a guess as to what is going on because I’m at a loss. We lost one of our hens last week, she appeared sick for the week or two prior to her death. She wasn’t very active, wouldn’t roost, stopped laying, lost weight but was still eating and drinking. She had a dirty butt so we did clean her and check her vent area thinking she was egg bound but didn’t feel anything. Her crop seemed normal.

We came home from a weekend vacation last night (someone was taking care of our flock while away) to find my favorite hen dead on the roost. She seemed perfectly healthy when we left on Friday morning so to find her dead was confusing. Neither of the hens in question were old (2-3 years old). I’ve also never seen a hen die on the roost which makes me think it was sudden? I’m now concerned that something may be spreading through our flock but have no idea what it could be. The girls always have access to feed, oyster shells, grit, clean water, plenty of room in the coop and the run. We did add ten new hens to our flock roughly two months ago; we did have one chick pass before we brought them into the coop but aside from that they all seem healthy. At the beginning of spring we did find that we had some sort of vermin find its way into the coop and was eating the eggs. We caught it in a trap but still find the occasional broken egg in the nesting boxes which I’m thinking is a hen. Hoping someone may have a theory about what’s going on or advice about what we could do. Thank you!

 

[azygous]

The only way to get a postmortem would be to send a dead chicken to a state lab for a necropsy. We can only take wild guesses.

Were these two hens that died spontaneously commercial breeds? Sex links are bred for prolific egg laying. They spend two years shooting out tons of eggs, and then their bodies appear to suddenly give out and they die of either reproductive infection, internal laying, or egg binding.

This can happen occasionally to other breeds, but commercial breeds seem to have their lives cut short far too often by these egg related issues.

 

[Nmfensley94]

The only way to get a postmortem would be to send a dead chicken to a state lab for a necropsy. We can only take wild guesses.

Were these two hens that died spontaneously commercial breeds? Sex links are bred for prolific egg laying. They spend two years shooting out tons of eggs, and then their bodies appear to suddenly give out and they die of either reproductive infection, internal laying, or egg binding.

This can happen occasionally to other breeds, but commercial breeds seem to have their lives cut short far too often by these egg related issues.

The only way to get a postmortem would be to send a dead chicken to a state lab for a necropsy. We can only take wild guesses.

Were these two hens that died spontaneously commercial breeds? Sex links are bred for prolific egg laying. They spend two years shooting out tons of eggs, and then their bodies appear to suddenly give out and they die of either reproductive infection, internal laying, or egg binding.

This can happen occasionally to other breeds, but commercial breeds seem to have their lives cut short far too often by these egg related issues.

I’m not super well versed on chicken breeds but I believe so. They all came from tractor supply. I know the one we found dead on the roost last night was a leghorn. The one that was sick for a brief period looked like our Rhode Island reds except she was orange. It’s unfortunate but what you’re saying makes sense. Thank you.