Unsecure chicken perches

[Hell]

Hi i found one of our ladys sadly dead this morning and i have no idea why which is worrying me more for the others.

She was out and about yesterday as normal, nice and bright as usualy. This morning i noticed she didnt come out of the cope and after the school run i went to check her and sadly shes passed away. There is a very small amount of blood in the coop (2-3 spots about 10pence piece size) but not where she is laying. She didnt lay an egg yesterday or sunday but i wasnt worried. Could she have eaten something? been poisoned? or could it be something else? She is 1 year old by the way.

 

Please please help.

[Chucky Mama]

Sorry to hear your news Unfortunatley without a post mortem it will be pretty difficult to isolate what may have caused her death.

[Hell]

How much would a vets usually charge for a post mortem? Im worried for the other girls now. I think ill call the vets and enquire, or wasnt their a chap who did testing in the Worksop area of Notts i read somewhere but cant find now as im not too far from there?

 

My thoughts on it now are poison i.e rat poison although we dont use any i imagine its a goodpossiblty our neighbours do or mareks dieses which ive just been reading about because of the way she was laying with her legs. I either case i dont know what to do, ive kept the remaining chooks in there eglu run incase its something from the garden but dont want to have to forever.

[Chucky Mama]

It is not cheap and it is difficult to diagnose some things on post mortem without sending samples away and even then it is not always definative. Poisoning particualarly can be difficult to diagnose. They may be able to see areas of bleeding. In your position, I would check your garden for any poison, give the others a good once over and just observe them for the moment. I am not sure a PM would shed much more light on what happened.

[Hell]

thank you, my vets weren't very helpful with it but ive called a poultry vets who have said possible heart attack but are happy to send off some swabs of the healthy chooks to rule out a bacterial infection for £10 so will be doing that this afternoon.

[Chucky Mama]

That sounds like a good plan. Do give them all a good once over too for parasites etc & worm with Flubenvet if they are over 3 months without worming.

[Olly]

Sorry to hear of your loss, but I would not worry unduly. 1 year old is not very old for a hen, but sometimes they just keel over for no obvious reason and I'd be more inclined to suspect natural causes than anything else. If she had been poisoned by something then it's likely the other hens would have eaten the same thing - keep an eye on them, but provided they seem healthy then I would guess it was just something individual to this hen. Ruling out bacterial infection is a good idea, and that sounds quite good value.

[Hell]

Thank you for the replys and advice i was paniced this morning. Will be getting the results back from the swabs on Thursday so fingers crossed now

 

Thanks again

[Plum]

I'm sorry, I lost one suddenly and it's still going round and round in my head, heart attack, rat poison, foreign body causing bleed and enteritis but I'll never know. Hope you get an answer.