Woke up to an unhappy suprise...

Shay1327

Songster
10 Years
Apr 21, 2009
162
0
119
Franklinville, NY
Woke up this morning and starting making my rounds feeding everyone. Started with the chicks/ducklings in the brooder (God knows my Cornish X's could not wait one more minute to eat, they think I starve them), moved on to the pigs and the goat, and finally to my chickens. When I started throwing their scratch in I noticed on of my bantam mixes, Rogue was leg up in the coop. I rushed inside but was a few hours late it seems she was already gone. Some of her feathers were strewn around the coop but other than that she looked perfectly fine. No wounds to speak of. Her crop didn't seem abnormally large and I know she laid an egg yesterday, so she didn't have and impacted crop and was not egg bound.

This whole tragedy is just a mystery to me. Could she have been picked on to death? My Australorp hens take the pecking order pretty seriously and the way it goes in our coop is R.J. my roo, the 3 Australorps, the 3 Banty mixes, and my silkies last. I know the bigger hens push around the little ones from time to time but I didn't hear anything. All my chickens (besides the Silkies) free range during the day and our locked in their coop at night. I guess I will never know.
IMG_1892.jpg

That is Rogue to the right.
 
It could have been an injury too. Sometimes when startled they can damage the skull, I'm not sure if you saw anything- a broken neck is obvious. And chickens can suffer cardiac arrest the way rabbits do. Without a necropsy...

I'm very sorry to hear of this.
 
I'm sorry for your loss, she was a beauty.

I've had a parrot with a head injury, it took a week before any symptoms showed after initial impact. She started staying at the bottom, seizures, and died later the same day at the animal hospital. So it could have been a delayed reaction, as mentioned above.
 
I'm still not sure what happend. She was in the middle of the run away from both the roost and the nest boxes. She did have a bad habit of sneaking into the pig pen and stealing some of their feed now and again. Now that you brought up head injury I'm kinda wondering if maybe she was stealing some pig feed and one of the pigs bit her. They definately do not like anyone messing with their food and have very strong jaw pressure.

I'm gonna keep an eye on the rest of my girls (and Roo) to make sure I don't notice anything funky with them.
 
What a coincedence. Just yesterday morning, DH went out to feed, and he found a Black Australorp hen dead in the coop. She was 7 or 8 months old. Not a mark on her, neck was not floppy, just like she passed in her sleep.

We are watching closely for other birds showing signs of illness. But no one is ever around our birds, we do not get visitors. Not anti-social, lol, just no one knows where we live. Our co-workers live forty miles away.....

So sorry for your loss.
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Cheri
 
I'm so sorry for your loss Cheri. Yeah my hen was about 6 months old, not a mark on her and her eyes were closed like she was sleeping. Been a rough 2 weeks, first one of my Silkies was egg bound so she lived in my bathroom for a week while I nursed her back to health then this happend. I wish I could make my Australorps a little friendlier, they act like they are in a big girls club and the little girls aren't allowed. They act like children sometimes.
 

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