AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

Good morning all.

OK I've just found a dead chicken in the coop. It's been coming for about a week (at lease that's when I started noticing she wasn't well).

She was wandering around in the afternoon free ranging (about three weeks ago) and I noticed she was sort of gagging like she was trying to throw up, and sort of hunched into herself. I thought she must've eaten a long piece of grass and it was sort of stuck halfway, I didn't think anything else of it. Anyway that's the background.

She had been getting less and less active and three nights ago was unable to walk up the ramp to go to bed. So I put her up and did this for two nights. She was extremely emmaciated and hadn't been eating that I was aware of. I fed her some cat food as a bit of a pick-me-up yesterday morning which she ate.

Anyway she died during the night and I had a wee look at her insides this morning. This is what I came up with. Starting from the top, her crop was full and gassy and very liquidy. The contents had been there for a long time and were starting to rot. Intestines didn't seem very full and had air bubbles in them. Her liver was nice and bright and had a few tiny black spots on it. There was lots of fat around the organs, 20mm thick in some spots. Her egg spot (where the undeveloped ova hang awaiting their calling), was grey, and didn't look like it was active, there was about three clear ova the size of a glass topped pin and lots of tiny tiny ones. No yellow ova, all clear or grey.

She was a Light Sussex and about 6-7 years old. All other hens that share with her are fine.

Any ideas or was she just old?

Thanks everybody.

Ann