The mistery of the white chicken

[lay]

This is my first time posting in here so I apologize if this happens to be in the wrong section.

So yesterday my mother found a white chicken outside our yard with a deep wound below one of her wings, so deep she had one of her organs exposed which after some research around i figured it would be a lung but i'm still not 100% sure. Anyway, the weird part about this is that she was surrounded and untouched by my 4 dogs which is especially weird considering 2 of them are known for being predators as in one of them we know has killed previous chickens of our own before and the other hunts down rabbits i'd say weekly. After that i picked her up and brought her inside the chicken coop and placed her inside a box where she would be safe from attacks coming from our chickens.

Fast forward to the next day, i wake up at around 12PM and i go check to see if she's doing any better and allow our other chickens to range freely. So when i get there i notice that the chicken is not inside the box we've placed her last night and she happens to be inside the chicken coop. I found it weird because i don't think my mother would place her inside the coop especially with eggs from our other chickens right next to her as that could be seen as hostile activity by the others so i took her out and put her inside the box again. I spent my afternoon at home so i could check on her more often, fast forward to 7PM my mother arrives at home and i go check the chicken to see if everything's going fine and i kid you not the chicken is not there anymore. No signs of predators, no blood, no feathers, nada! My other chickens were around that area as well and all of them were untouched.

After that i went around our property asking if anyone had touched her (There was the possibility this chicken came from another property so perhaps one of my family members had returned her to her home) and everyone was as surprised as i was. This is the box she was kept in below the shadow of one of our carob trees where we allow our chickens to range in safety:

The reason why that red tool is there is so that our other chickens can't bite her since there's a hole in between the boxes where the they could get their head inside but i don't think a chicken could escape through that same hole...

Anyway, while i was discussing this with my mother i asked her why did she put the chicken inside the chicken coop earlier in the morning and she said that she didn't! Which is weirder than the missing itself because she could barely move her legs. She was so weak she could not even stand or sit properly, her legs were to the side with the food and water right in front of her, that's how bad it was and she somehow appeared inside the chicken coop!!

I'm from Portugal and wild life around here isn't very predator abundant. It is mostly rabbits and snakes, you don't see much variety around here. I also apologize for any grammatical errors as English isn't my main language!

I'm really confused as to what happened and so is my family. How the chicken got inside the coop by herself is the biggest mystery, bigger than the missing itself as that could technically be done by a snake but there were no signs of that happening either.

Anyway feel free to share your thoughts as to what might have happened.

Thank you

 

[Sneebsey]

I think the hole in the box is likely large enough for a crafty chicken to escape from, so that's how she got around. No idea with regards to how she got the wound, could be predation from your dogs, but who knows. I am more concerned at the moment with the exposed organ you speak of. Are you certain that it is an organ and not the 'meat' of the breast?

I'd appreciate pictures as for her to heal, she will likely need intervention and you'll get better advice if we can see the wound.

ETA: Apologies, did not read thoroughly enough; has the chicken disappeared now?

 

[lay]

Yes she's gone and there are no signs of violence by predators. No feathers, no bleeding, nothing. She's just gone.

Regarding her wound i'm pretty sure it was past their skin and that it was an organ very similar to a lung

 

[Sneebsey]

If she reappears, please do let us know. Hopefully we can try and get her fixed up for you. I can see how breast-meat could be mistaken for a lung, which is why I suggested that; if it is a lung, it would be quite small, and bone would be visible. If it does turn out to be a lung, prognosis isn't great, I'm afraid.

As the strange chicken has been near your own chickens and in your coop, be sure to watch out for any illness or parasite activity within the flock in the next few weeks, in case she brought something nasty with her.

 

[lay]

I will thank you very much for the advices

 

[CowboyCasual]

Ya know birds can act a bit strange. I had a peahen show up randomly on my property one day. Out of nowhere. I thought maybe she belonged to a neighbor, so I went around asking. No one in my neighborhood owned her so, I let her stay. Figured she might be wild.

She would drink from the horses water, and forage for ants, and bugs. One day I started putting out chicken feed for her, and she would come running up to me as I poured it on the ground.

Suddenly one day she just vanished. I wanted a peahen, and a peacock, so I was a little heartbroken when she left. She reappeared 5 days later. Like it was her home. So i kept putting food out for her.

One morning I went out to feed her and the horses and noticed several dozen feathers littered around the property. No blood, no carccus. Id like to think she made it to safety and decided to never show up again, but I had a grim feeling that coyotes got her.

I collected all her feathers, and keep them in the tac room. They're nice decoration since they're kinda bluish black with a dark green tinge. Something to remember her by.

 

[lay]

She somehow came back and we found her sitting right next to the chicken coop. Unfortunately she was very weak, the wound was much worse with flies all over so there were parasites developing. I covered her wound with a rag so the flies would stop bothering her and placed her in the shadow of our tree. She died a couple minutes later

 

[Sneebsey]

Sorry about that. Fly strike is a very real threat with an open wound and they are fast to lay their eggs.

 

[drumstick diva]

Fly strike is horrible, the resulting maggots cause much more damage than the original wound. So very sorry.