I lost one of my girls on Monday.
I got home from work and started my new after work routine - let the dogs out, put the dogs in, let the chickens out, let the dogs out again (because they never do all of their business right away the first time.)
After opening the chicken door intot he run, I started the head count to make sure everyone was accounted for. I only come up with 10. I open the coop door, see the naked necks hanging out eating and talking to each other. Hmmm...I must have counted wrong. So I rechecked the outside chickens, sure enough, only 10. As I'm heading back into the coop, the two stragglers headed outside. One is still missing.
I go into the coop, and see one of the girls laying in the corner. It was one of the Australorps. They were all fine when I checked on them in the morning - or at least they were all still huddled together in a corner (stupid things still don't roost at night).
I picked her up and started looking for any trauma. No pecking wounds and no bite marks (I'm fairly confident it had nothing to do with Kenny's terror spree). Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It doesn't seem like an illness, as I should have noticed something in the other chickens. I'm not sure what happened. Only thing I can think of is maybe she ate something or was just born with bad genetics. Either way, I'm not sure I'll be able to find out short of a chicken-topsy. I'll just chalk it up to a mystery death and keep an eye on the rest.
**Update - at first I thought this was a random chicken, but then it turned out to be Aussie. **
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