- Apr 8, 2014
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Hi everyone. I apologize if this is something that has been covered here before, but a quick search did not turn up any clear results. I am very worried about my other chickens, so I wanted to address this to folks with some real experience.
This morning one of my silkies died very quickly and without any clear symptoms prior to her last ten minutes or so. She was an eight month old hen that had been laying without any problems for the last three months. There are five other silkie hens in our flock that are all the same age. The hen that died was prone to getting a bit more messy on her backside than the others, but it was not pasting up her vent.
The circumstances: I was outside letting them free range this morning. After scratching around as normal for about 30 minutes, this hen sat down on the ground. She appeared to be laying an egg, so I left her alone. After about five minutes, she started listing to the side and it was obvious that she was struggling. I came to her to see if it could be egg binding. I did not see an egg nor did the vent appear to be struggling. She was starting to close her eyes as if she were falling asleep and then slowly waking back up over and over again.
I picked her up. She was going fairly limp, but did startle briefly and flap her wings. I took her over to the coop and sat her down. She convulsed violently and flapped her wings, propelling herself up briefly before falling on her side. She did this one more time a few seconds after the first time. I then picked her up again to inspect her vent just in case. She went even more limp and died. Her oviduct did protrude briefly during this process, but it appeared to be at the same time her body went entirely limp.
There are no obvious wounds on her and I did not hear any commotion prior to her sitting down. The hens have free ranged in this same place countless times and none of the others are showing any signs of distress. They were scratching in the area near our fire pit where we had recently burned some cherry tree branches, so there was ash on the ground. It is their first spring here in East Tennessee, so there are all kinds of new things growing now.
I've gone through the various diseases in some books I have, but nothing stands out as an obvious cause for such a sudden death. The breeder that we used does not vaccinate bantams, so it is possible that it is Marek's, but our flock has been isolated from other chickens entirely since they were day old chicks. We do have wild birds that frequent the yard--primarily song birds and sometimes wild turkeys. The run and coop are protected from outside birds, but they could be exposed in the yard.
Thank you for any insights that you can share. It has been over an hour since the death and none of the other hens are exhibiting symptoms.
This morning one of my silkies died very quickly and without any clear symptoms prior to her last ten minutes or so. She was an eight month old hen that had been laying without any problems for the last three months. There are five other silkie hens in our flock that are all the same age. The hen that died was prone to getting a bit more messy on her backside than the others, but it was not pasting up her vent.
The circumstances: I was outside letting them free range this morning. After scratching around as normal for about 30 minutes, this hen sat down on the ground. She appeared to be laying an egg, so I left her alone. After about five minutes, she started listing to the side and it was obvious that she was struggling. I came to her to see if it could be egg binding. I did not see an egg nor did the vent appear to be struggling. She was starting to close her eyes as if she were falling asleep and then slowly waking back up over and over again.
I picked her up. She was going fairly limp, but did startle briefly and flap her wings. I took her over to the coop and sat her down. She convulsed violently and flapped her wings, propelling herself up briefly before falling on her side. She did this one more time a few seconds after the first time. I then picked her up again to inspect her vent just in case. She went even more limp and died. Her oviduct did protrude briefly during this process, but it appeared to be at the same time her body went entirely limp.
There are no obvious wounds on her and I did not hear any commotion prior to her sitting down. The hens have free ranged in this same place countless times and none of the others are showing any signs of distress. They were scratching in the area near our fire pit where we had recently burned some cherry tree branches, so there was ash on the ground. It is their first spring here in East Tennessee, so there are all kinds of new things growing now.
I've gone through the various diseases in some books I have, but nothing stands out as an obvious cause for such a sudden death. The breeder that we used does not vaccinate bantams, so it is possible that it is Marek's, but our flock has been isolated from other chickens entirely since they were day old chicks. We do have wild birds that frequent the yard--primarily song birds and sometimes wild turkeys. The run and coop are protected from outside birds, but they could be exposed in the yard.
Thank you for any insights that you can share. It has been over an hour since the death and none of the other hens are exhibiting symptoms.
