I'd love some help figuring out what killed my beautiful Buff...
Yesterday afternoon we found one of our 6 mo. old Buff Orpingtons completely slumped over in the run. She was almost totally unresponsive, had shallow breathing, eyes almost closed, and was unable to move her feet or hold her head up. Her comb was purplish and it looked like some blood vessels around the rim of her lower eyelids had ruptured, though the eyes themselves looked normal.
Our first thought was heat stress, even though the girls have experienced hotter temps, so we put her in a cool bath. She seemed to perk up just enough to keep her eyes open from time to time, but she seemed to have seizure-like spasms in her neck and kept snaking her head around in a strange chicken version of a Stevie Wonder move. We took her out of the bath and put her on a towel, where she expired shortly thereafter.
I did notice a Buff with an itchy red lower eyelid spot a couple of days before, though, and I thought it was just a minor abrasion that was healing. No breathing problems, discharge, funny droppings--zip. She had been eating and laying just fine.
All 16 chickens seemed the picture of health until this, even that morning. Keeping the eyelid thing in mind, I'm not ruling out a disease, but the suddenness makes me wonder if it might have been a scorpion sting, especially after reading some previous posts. All the other girls look great this morning. I'd sure appreciate any thoughts.
(I have, BTW, done what I could to disinfect the coop, feeders, waterers, and nest boxes. All food and bedding has been replaced. The run is a 12 x 18 ft. enclosure, and I'm not sure if there is anything more I can do about sanitizing the ground, though I did rake it well.)
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