My son just went out in the chicken house and found one of our hens dead on the ground and our roo on the roost sort of looking at her and closing his eyes. He brought him in and he just sits with his eyes closed and his head down, not normal at all. What could cause this? The hen was fine yesterday and so was he, what could cause something so quickly?
Help! What could be wrong??
Okay, an update. Now the roo (Baby) is eating and drinking and clucking normally. Could he have been mourning the loss of the hen? I'm hoping he continues to act normal, but what happened to her, what could have caused her to drop dead like that? We didn't notice any hens acting strange the last few days and all the others are acting normal. He is now acting like he usually does when we bring him in. Too strange.
By the way, some of you may remember me talking about him. We hatched him out a couple of years ago under a light bulb the last week he was in an egg because the hen hatched her 8 babies and we had 5 extra eggs on the nest that hens layed throughout the broody hens egg sitting process. Anyway, we didn't have a bator at the time and no other sitting hen so we put the eggs under a light bulb in the kids bathroom (figured what do we have to loose, we can at least try) . All but one hatched. Baby was the first to hatch a week later and then the rest a week after that. He is extremely tame and much loved.
If she just fell from the perch, it might have been a heart attack. It sounds funny, but if you google chicken and heart attack you discover that finding a chicken that has fallen dead from its perch is very often due to a heart attack.
I think some breeds are prone to them.
Interesting, thanks Catscan for the info. Do you think the roo is mourning then? Do chickens do that?
I think they might. They are very social and have definite preferences for company...so to lose a companion could be stressful.
Okay now this is really strange, he was acting fine again, we put him out and he roamed around with the other hens acting normal, mounting hens etc etc. Then all of a sudden, he was standing again with his tail down and his head drooped and his eyes shut. He was acting normal for about 2 hours and now he is back to acting odd.
It is possible he is ill and it was a disease that killed the hen...so watch him. But he may just be upset.
If she fell off the roost...probably heart attack. If she died on the ground...there are other diseases that can cause sudden death without previous symptoms.
He acted strange for a whiile and then was back to normal again. Just so strange how he was acting weird, then fine, then weird and now fine again. Not sure if we should keep him in somewhere and warm or put him out on the roost woth the hens.
We arn't sure if the hen was on the roost and fell off or just on the ground below and died. The roo was on the roost looking down at her. My son discovered this about 3:30 this afternoon and he hadn't been out to check on them till then. My husband feeds them in the morning and didn't notice anything then.