From a study on broiler chickens presented at the “22nd Symposium of Veterinarians of Serbia with International Participation”:
Sudden death syndrome is one of the diseases that usually occur between the ages of 21 up to 28 days, affects healthy, vibrant birds that die in 1 to 2 minutes. Dead birds usually lay on their back; mortality in the flock is 1 to 2%. The causes of the disease are inadequate technology posture, nutrition, metabolic disorders and the rapid growth of broilers. The aim was to examine the impact of population density on the occurrence of sudden death syndrome.
I know the image of little baby birds keeling over is a sad one, but this abstract grabbed my attention because it reminded me of the lady who saved her chicken with mouth-to-beak resuscitation. She recounts the harrowing tale in Mark Lewis’s The Natural History of the Chicken, the best documentary about chickens ever.