We lost one...why?

[mendozer]

Came home today to find one of our hens dead in the nesting box. My wife found her earlier in the day. She was one of our favorites so of course we were sad. I did an autopsy and didn't notice anything weird inside. No enlarged organs, stuck egg, normal looking internal organs other than some spotting on the liver. Meat looked fine, but because we don't know if it's an illness of some sort, we're not feeding her to the dog. She was bullied by the lead hen and would sleep in the nesting box, I even had to manually take her out all the time. Knowing what she died from is of course a curiosity for me but also I'm worried about the others. She had no open sores that I could tell. Should I treat them all with some kind of medicine like a dewormer or an antibiotic?

 

[dawg53]

Do you have a pic showing the liver? It could possibly be histomoniasis. I'm sorry for your loss.

 

[Kiwibird]

Was she old in terms of the life expectancy of her breed?

 

[Eggcessive]

Without having your state poultry vet do a necropsy with lab work, it would be hard to know a cause unless seeing something different about her organs. She might have been so low in pecking order that she wasn’t getting enough to eat and drink. Crop problems, reproductive disorders, heart or kidney disease are common causes of death. It is really not a good idea to treat with antibiotics without a cause of death. You could take in some droppings to a vet to test them for coccidiosis or worms. Sorry for your loss.

 

[mendozer]

I didn't take pictures. I looked up this histomoniasis and it seems like it's rampant with turkeys. But the picture I saw of a liver wasn't that bad. It wasn't all blackened, but did have a few dark spots. She was picked on by the alpha of the original 4 at least. I brought in 6 chicks this spring. So she shouldn't have been on the bottom overall. I also should mention I have seen a few rotten eggs over the last few months from my older girls. Her eggs in particular stand out (bc of the green color) but I did have brown ones rotten, even just this morning. I haven't seen an egg from the older ones in a few weeks now, mainly the smaller ones from younger hens.
She was an Easter Egger hatched in the spring of 2016.
There's no harm in deworming just to be sure right? I use to deworm once a year but I've slacked on it.