I'm a nurse and pretty familiar with the insides of a healthy chicken, so I can spot the most obvious of things...this one was quite obvious. I don't think she had any pathogenic illness but maybe genetic or metabolic~I did feed higher protein than I normally do all winter and then upped protein higher than I normally do this spring(not excessive by anyone's standards on this forum, but excessive by my own standards). Won't be making that mistake again.
She showed no signs of illness in her actions, laying or appearance and only had two peach colored urates under her roost spot of late, which isn't bad and can be caused by dietary changes but in light of her death, now looks more sinister.
Since young birds are all I have and I need replacements, breeding is what they will get and only time will tell if this is a genetic problem or environmental/metabolic/environmental in nature. Sometimes a person never finds out unless they have many birds dying from the same thing and it has an obvious etiology or they have sent them off to a lab.
She showed no signs of illness in her actions, laying or appearance and only had two peach colored urates under her roost spot of late, which isn't bad and can be caused by dietary changes but in light of her death, now looks more sinister.
Since young birds are all I have and I need replacements, breeding is what they will get and only time will tell if this is a genetic problem or environmental/metabolic/environmental in nature. Sometimes a person never finds out unless they have many birds dying from the same thing and it has an obvious etiology or they have sent them off to a lab.
