Help! Every now and then I have one of my hens die. I notice some stool dried on her feathers, and within a few days, she is dead. I tried warmed olive oil once,but the hen died anyway. Any tips would be appreciated. The hens are Rhode Island Reds and otherwise very healthy.

Hi,
I took a hen who had died of unknown causes in to our local diagnostic lab and they discovered that she had simply had an egg blocking her vent. The egg had broken inside of her body and no new eggs or fecal matter could get past. She was droppy for a few days and finally just plopped over and died. I hope this will help you. It simply might be an egg blocking the vents of some of your birds I don't know how to treat it and I myself would appreciate any advice from somebody who does know.

Egg binding is a problem that seems to be worse in laying flocks that were grown with no attention to delaying sexual maturity. If your pullets were raised under artificial lighting or from an early spring hatch without using a restricted diet, they may well have come into laying a month or so early. A flock like this will have more problems passing the egg, and will in turn have higher mortality from egg-binding and proclapse of the oviduct. This happens because the pullet matures and begins laying before the body is fully grown. There are lots of other things that can cause hens to die, such as parasites (internal and external) disease, and nutritional factors.