SuspiciousChick
Chirping
- Mar 31, 2025
- 80
- 103
- 96
I am sick.
My sweet Apple is dead. I’ve already lost another chicken this week to euthanasia so this is an extra slap to the face.
I believe this is my fault. I was working late last night and assumed that another person in the home would lock the chickens up, like they normally do when they get off from work. The one time I didn’t make sure was the time that they didn’t lock them up. I was fearing the worse when I noticed today, the doors were wide open to the coop. I went out there overflowing with dread. I found Apple laying on her belly/ halfway on her side with her legs stretched out.
She has had a bad limp for the past 3 days due to one of my cockerels being too rough. My other Red Production pullet also has a limp but Apple was worse. Immediately after I saw she had a limp I separated the offending cockerels from the flock so she couldn’t be hurt anymore. At first I thought that she had gotten out into the sun and due to her bad limp, couldn’t get up, and got heatstroke and died. I thoroughly checked her body over and found a sort of puncture wound on her underside.
What could have done this to her? Everyone else in the coop is okay. There are no feathers or even a sign of struggle. Could my other chickens have picked on her after death? It doesn’t look like she was scavenged on… My family has two cats that live outdoors. One always ignores the chickens and the other knows to keep his distance after I made it known they’re off limits. If he had killed her, he would have drug her further away from the coop (she was laying near the entrance) and she would’ve looked more… dead.
She also had a droplet of sticky, yellow ish liquid coming from her beak.
My flock was tested positive for mycoplasma, coccidia, and whipworms. Sickness doesn’t explain the wound on her belly…
Please help me find out what did this to her. My chickens mean the world to me and I can’t stand to not know what happened. I am heart broken.
Pictures are attached below.
My sweet Apple is dead. I’ve already lost another chicken this week to euthanasia so this is an extra slap to the face.
I believe this is my fault. I was working late last night and assumed that another person in the home would lock the chickens up, like they normally do when they get off from work. The one time I didn’t make sure was the time that they didn’t lock them up. I was fearing the worse when I noticed today, the doors were wide open to the coop. I went out there overflowing with dread. I found Apple laying on her belly/ halfway on her side with her legs stretched out.
She has had a bad limp for the past 3 days due to one of my cockerels being too rough. My other Red Production pullet also has a limp but Apple was worse. Immediately after I saw she had a limp I separated the offending cockerels from the flock so she couldn’t be hurt anymore. At first I thought that she had gotten out into the sun and due to her bad limp, couldn’t get up, and got heatstroke and died. I thoroughly checked her body over and found a sort of puncture wound on her underside.
What could have done this to her? Everyone else in the coop is okay. There are no feathers or even a sign of struggle. Could my other chickens have picked on her after death? It doesn’t look like she was scavenged on… My family has two cats that live outdoors. One always ignores the chickens and the other knows to keep his distance after I made it known they’re off limits. If he had killed her, he would have drug her further away from the coop (she was laying near the entrance) and she would’ve looked more… dead.
She also had a droplet of sticky, yellow ish liquid coming from her beak.
My flock was tested positive for mycoplasma, coccidia, and whipworms. Sickness doesn’t explain the wound on her belly…
Please help me find out what did this to her. My chickens mean the world to me and I can’t stand to not know what happened. I am heart broken.
Pictures are attached below.
It's possible one of the others pecked at her but I wouldn't think on the belly like that. In my experience most predators would have drug her off somewhere. Perhaps she got some kind of injury while she was out or just had passed from other issues and a hawk or a vulture, even a crow was after her remains, which could have been scared away by something else before doing much. That area is where they typically start eating from. What kind of predators do you have around?
