Our 2 1/2 year old Chantecler rooster (The Professor) died last night
The back story - two weeks ago we let our younger roosters out for some fresh air/grass and one picked a fight with our resident rooster, who lost for the first time. No blood was shed, it was more a matter of the younger roo usurped him and our older roo kept his distance from the coop until we put the younger one back in his enclosure.
Even though the younger roo was no longer around our older one did not interact with his hens. He stopped crowing, didn't mate with the hens anymore, and pretty much kept to himself. We thought it was psychological, that he was no longer the dominant male and was acting accordingly. This went on for a bit over a week.
By Saturday he was lethargic, so much so that we were able to catch him without any trouble. We noticed his vent was very pasty yellow, he was COVERED in mites, and was emaciated even though his croup was full. We had no idea he was that sick and felt terrible for not trying to catch him sooner. We dusted him with a product from our feed store (similar to Sevin) and noticed it killed a lot of mites very quickly. I found him dead this morning.
We checked our hens over and only found one with a few mites on her. We'll be dusting all birds and the coop tonight just to be sure.
Does this sound like it was mites that killed him? Is it typical for a bird to be covered in them and yet not be seen on others that share the coop? Or could he have died from something unrelated to the mites? We've never lost a bird in the 2 1/2 years that we've had a flock and are at a loss about what to do.
Any insight would be appreciated!
The back story - two weeks ago we let our younger roosters out for some fresh air/grass and one picked a fight with our resident rooster, who lost for the first time. No blood was shed, it was more a matter of the younger roo usurped him and our older roo kept his distance from the coop until we put the younger one back in his enclosure.
Even though the younger roo was no longer around our older one did not interact with his hens. He stopped crowing, didn't mate with the hens anymore, and pretty much kept to himself. We thought it was psychological, that he was no longer the dominant male and was acting accordingly. This went on for a bit over a week.
By Saturday he was lethargic, so much so that we were able to catch him without any trouble. We noticed his vent was very pasty yellow, he was COVERED in mites, and was emaciated even though his croup was full. We had no idea he was that sick and felt terrible for not trying to catch him sooner. We dusted him with a product from our feed store (similar to Sevin) and noticed it killed a lot of mites very quickly. I found him dead this morning.
We checked our hens over and only found one with a few mites on her. We'll be dusting all birds and the coop tonight just to be sure.
Does this sound like it was mites that killed him? Is it typical for a bird to be covered in them and yet not be seen on others that share the coop? Or could he have died from something unrelated to the mites? We've never lost a bird in the 2 1/2 years that we've had a flock and are at a loss about what to do.
Any insight would be appreciated!
