Unsure death- !!!Pictures included!!!! Rattlesnake bite, broken neck, help?

[TheOgdensmenagerie]

So this morning around 10am the chickens went nuts in the coop. They are free range come as they please to lay eggs. 10 is their normal drop off time. My ladies are quite noisy. Today was a little different the rooster was going nuts running around the coop.
That's Weird ran through my mind but I was knee deep in other chores and I couldn't stop to go check it out.

This afternoon feeding time I went to turn on the water and heard a light shuffling noise inside. I went around to look and one of my hens was on the floor of the coop.
She was trying to move her wings
but her head and neck would not budge. I went in to check it out further. Same thing her back half moved weakly while her head and neck just flopped in reaction.

I put her out of her misery but I have no idea what the hell happened.

We live in Foothills of Central California. The rattlers are out. I killed one in the coop area about a week ago. But I don't think a bite would cause paralysis.. swelling and death yes, but paralysis?

Could she have just hit the nesting box wrong and broke her neck but not died?
When I culled her an egg did let lose...

I'm stumped. She's around 3 years old.
Any help is better than nothing.

 

[springvalley123]

well, it is a neuro toxin from what I understand. sorry about your loss.

 

[Mellowmalt]

cockerel alerted you that something was in the coop so I doubt she just fell or banged her head. Sorry for your loss. She looked like a nice chicken. So what happened to the cockerel? Was it just her that died?

 

[TheOgdensmenagerie]

cockerel alerted you that something was in the coop so I doubt she just fell or banged her head. Sorry for your loss. She looked like a nice chicken. So what happened to the cockerel? Was it just her that died?

That's why I was leaning toward rattler. I would have thought she would be dead by 8 hours later though.

Other hens were inside the coop at the time as well. No one else has anything strange, Rooster is fine too.

No signs of a snake inside.

 

[ryneaeiel]

I'm sorry for the loss of your hen, but I highly doubt it was a rattlesnake. While paralysis is a (rare) symptom in humans, neurotoxins only make up a small portion of rattlesnake venom. It's mainly hemotoxins. In humans, a bite on the extremities will result in swelling and necrosis, and possibly death.

Rattlesnake venom is designed to quickly incapacitate and/or kill prey items like mice (and the hemotoxins assist in digestion.)

Fatalities in the average human male occurs around 8 hours to 2 days following a bite, depending on species.

Fatalities in large dogs can occur within 45 minutes, depending on species, location of bite, and the weight of the dog.

If your hen was bitten by a rattlesnake, I highly doubt she would have survived eight hours unless the rattlesnake gave her a dry bite, in which case no venom was injected and wouldn't have caused her symptoms.

It's possible there was a snake in the coop, but it's more likely that it startled the flock and caused one of the chickens to injure her (or the hen to injure herself) in a panic.

Edit: The limp head/neck and weak movement honestly sounds like shock induced by a non-fatal injury of the neck. I had to euthanize a mallard near my home that flew full-speed into a wire fence and broke its neck on impact. The break wasn't in a severe enough place to kill, but it caused her to be unable to move her neck whatsoever and she could only give very weak kicks with her legs and twitch her wings. She'd been out there for a few hours before I found her.