Hi everyone. Just rediscovered this site after not using it for years so I’ve created a new account to ask this question.
I currently only have four hens. Two are 8 year old barred rocks(rosa and pepper), one 3 year old Australorp (Myna),and a 3 year old Easter Egger named Figs.
Figs has had her eye severely injured. It happened sometime yesterday morning while they were all foraging outside. I don’t know exactly what happpened, but I found no evidence of her eye or blood anywhere outside in the woods or on any of our skunk traps. Figs also runs away from the other chicken Rosa, who is top of the pecking order. When I went to look at Figs’s eye, she calmed down as soon as I picked her up (she is usually sort of skittish and introverted). When I put her down, Rosa immediately targeted her and jumped to peck at her eye. I think it was definitely Rosa who did it because she didn’t even stop to look at Figs’s injury—she knew it was there and immediately went for it.
The eye itself is clean but the lid has sealed itself shut. We rinsed the blood off with plain warm water and flushed it as welll as we could with saline solution, but there is goo and crust keeping her eyelid closed. As you’ll see in the pictures below, the eye socket is sunken, swollen, and full of goo. At first I thought her eye was gone completely and the socket had just closed itself to heal, but that’s not the case. There’s loose tissue and goo in her eye socket, and the surrounding area is swollen. I tried to coax her eyelid down a bit—Figs let me do it gently, but it clearly hurt her a bit. When I pulled the lid down a slight bit I could see white goo with red bloodshot bits, and pus and blood started to seep out slowly.
My concern is that the wound is going to get infected and somehow affect her brain or her other eye/vision. We are doing our best to keep Rosa isolated from Figs so as not to stress Figs out further, but what can I do about the eye in the meantime? Should I try to open the eyelid and drain it, or should i continue keeping it clean and just hope that it heals itself?
Figs will never have her vision back on that one side, and Rosa will need to be dealt with somehow. But there is no chicken vet within 100 miles of me, so it’s not at all an option to bring her to see someone. My experience with chicken doctoring is mostly in the form of egg blockages, sour crop, social engineering to add birds, treating small peck wounds/lesions/lost toenails, etc..never dealt with an external injury this severe.
Any advice would be appreciated. I know there are huge risks associated with working on an injury this severe, but I’m incredibly concerned that an infection will spread if I don’t do something.
Here are a few pictures, the one of her standing is when we first noticed. There are two after cleaning and then a still from a video i took where you can almost see an intact pupil in the eyelid.
I currently only have four hens. Two are 8 year old barred rocks(rosa and pepper), one 3 year old Australorp (Myna),and a 3 year old Easter Egger named Figs.
Figs has had her eye severely injured. It happened sometime yesterday morning while they were all foraging outside. I don’t know exactly what happpened, but I found no evidence of her eye or blood anywhere outside in the woods or on any of our skunk traps. Figs also runs away from the other chicken Rosa, who is top of the pecking order. When I went to look at Figs’s eye, she calmed down as soon as I picked her up (she is usually sort of skittish and introverted). When I put her down, Rosa immediately targeted her and jumped to peck at her eye. I think it was definitely Rosa who did it because she didn’t even stop to look at Figs’s injury—she knew it was there and immediately went for it.
The eye itself is clean but the lid has sealed itself shut. We rinsed the blood off with plain warm water and flushed it as welll as we could with saline solution, but there is goo and crust keeping her eyelid closed. As you’ll see in the pictures below, the eye socket is sunken, swollen, and full of goo. At first I thought her eye was gone completely and the socket had just closed itself to heal, but that’s not the case. There’s loose tissue and goo in her eye socket, and the surrounding area is swollen. I tried to coax her eyelid down a bit—Figs let me do it gently, but it clearly hurt her a bit. When I pulled the lid down a slight bit I could see white goo with red bloodshot bits, and pus and blood started to seep out slowly.
My concern is that the wound is going to get infected and somehow affect her brain or her other eye/vision. We are doing our best to keep Rosa isolated from Figs so as not to stress Figs out further, but what can I do about the eye in the meantime? Should I try to open the eyelid and drain it, or should i continue keeping it clean and just hope that it heals itself?
Figs will never have her vision back on that one side, and Rosa will need to be dealt with somehow. But there is no chicken vet within 100 miles of me, so it’s not at all an option to bring her to see someone. My experience with chicken doctoring is mostly in the form of egg blockages, sour crop, social engineering to add birds, treating small peck wounds/lesions/lost toenails, etc..never dealt with an external injury this severe.
Any advice would be appreciated. I know there are huge risks associated with working on an injury this severe, but I’m incredibly concerned that an infection will spread if I don’t do something.
Here are a few pictures, the one of her standing is when we first noticed. There are two after cleaning and then a still from a video i took where you can almost see an intact pupil in the eyelid.
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