Another eye issue .. new chicken mamma . ~~~UPDATE!!~~~

[flymamma]

I have a 16 week old red sex link . Her hatch date is march 28 09 . I have her in lock down due to the fact that her eye is the size of a marble . Swolen shut , and pussy . I have a mixed breed / age flock . 12 total with hatch dates between march 25th and april 15 th [ one barred rock is older , got her as a well start she has a full comb and waddle ] . All of them are from the same supplier , although I did buy them at 3 different times , I got hooked and wanted more.
I had been feeding them 20% chick starter till about 10 days ago when i switched them to 16 % grower . My first question is , i know that the starter was medicated and the grower is not . Could the medicine in the starter have been keeping an underlying issues at bay ?
She did have bubbles in her eyes about 3 days after starting her on grower , then the eye started to swell . SHe does have a rattle in her chest , and is very tired , she does seem to be eating , but she only drank about a 3/4 of a quart in 5-6 days . I have been washing her eyes with eye wash from the pharmacy , and using terramycin 3 times a day . It does not seem to be helping . The discharge itself does not have an odor , but her featers smell kind of sour . She has been wiping the eye gunk on her wing , but no odor where she has been wiping . I think she may just need a bath .
I ordered Sulmet from Jeffers and it should be here tomorrow . I plan on treating the whole flock as I now have about half of them that are sneezing . I am concerned about it being Coryza . Another question I have is if it is Coryza , and I treat with Sulmet .... does this then become a re-curring problem ? These are very much pet chickens so , they will not be making any baby chickens , and I have no plans of getting rid of any of them . Is it "taboo" to keep a coryza infected flock ? Will it effect the eggs ? [btw , no eggs from any of them yet ... from egg watch to death watch

] How long after I medicate is it safe to eat the eggs , once they do start to lay . [ Most of my girls are sex links and red legs .. so early layers ]

 

[flymamma]

I forgot to add that the poo seems normal , and that she has been housed in a coop/ run.. The coop is elevated 3 1/2 feet wide x 8 feet long x 3 feet tall [ the coop stand almost 6 feet tall on stilts for a shady area under it ] .. the coop is inside the run which is 8ft x 12ft x 6ft ..an old carport frame that we wrapped with chicken wire and put corigated plastic on for the roof ... my sick chick is in the coop and the other girls are in the run with no acess to the coop . pine shaving on the run floor and straw in the nest boxes in the coop .

 

[flymamma]

I called the lady I got the chickens from . She said she had seen this condition many times before , she called it CRD . She said that the chickens sinus ducts get clogged with hardened snot or puss and backs up into the eyes , putting preasure on the optic nerve .SHe told me to bring the chicken to her and she would show me what to do . She gently squeezed her eye in different places and BIG chunks of hard white puss came out .... she said there are pockets for it to get stuck in . There was probably a whole tablespoon full of goo that came out of her eye ! It was so gross but she seems to be feelig better already .We put some neosporin on her eye to try to loosen the last little bit that was stuck to her eye , my guess is that she will be blind in that eye . But I would rather have her blind in one eye than dead .Her eye lids are really stretched out , but I think that will go down . I have her on oxytetracycline now, thinking something is better than nothing [ given to me by my chicken angel .. Thanks Christie !] ... I will probably switch her to sulmet tomorrow when it comes . Just because Sulmet will work in 2 days according to the package , and the cylcline would take 14 days . I think she needs a more agressive course as bad as it was.