This afternoon we found a one-year-old New Hampshire hen dead in a nest box, along with a healthy broody Orpington. Everybody was fine this morning. There were no outward signs of injury, but there was a big gob of thick, sticky, clear goo coming out of her mouth. I did a sort of autopsy, though not really sure what to look for. In her crop I found what appeared to be the membrane from an egg; we think there may be a hen laying shell-less eggs occasionally. (Maybe the goo was the white?) Everything else in the crop looked normal; it smelled pretty sour, but by that time she had been dead for a while. Inside the body cavity there was a quantity of runny yellow yolk, and a gob of thick yolk (about the consistency of deviled egg) stuck to one side of the abdominal fat. The skein of developing eggs looked pretty odd, too, but I haven't seen those before so am not sure what they should look like.
Her heart did not look particularly good - it seemed small, discolored, and the auricles were soft instead of firm. There was quite a lot of fat, both inside and out (too many tortillas!), including fat around the heart.
So, any guesses? Does it sound like there may have been a problem with the egg plumbing, or is heart failure more likely? We did photograph the egg skein but it's a pretty nasty-looking pic...
Her heart did not look particularly good - it seemed small, discolored, and the auricles were soft instead of firm. There was quite a lot of fat, both inside and out (too many tortillas!), including fat around the heart.
So, any guesses? Does it sound like there may have been a problem with the egg plumbing, or is heart failure more likely? We did photograph the egg skein but it's a pretty nasty-looking pic...
Last edited:
