Chick Eye Puncture Wound Injury

[SourRoses]

Hi guys.
About an hour ago I was doing the final nightly check on the chicks and I saw one of them had their head where it shouldn't be. I bent over to take a look and all the flighty leghorns jumped and the chick somehow stabbed itself in the eye with a sharp piece of hardware cloth
It was bleeding so I picked it up and held it while trying to have a look. It seems to be a puncture wound right in the eyeball
We held her until the bleeding stopped and she seemed sleepy, then placed her in a tall padded basket partly under the heat lamp inside brooder for the night. (I didn't want the others to pick on her injury)

Background story: We're raising some leghorn chicks up for a neighbor, so we had them in a different brooding pen than we normally use. The hardware cloth was just put in place by us a few days ago and we really thought we had it all tucked away safely (I nipped off every stabby bit I could find, guess I missed one), and 3 out of 4 edges are covered with wood. This was in the door hinge area. I feel just horrible as we've raised a lot of chicks and never had one injured before, let alone made such a bad mistake. I blocked the little spot with a taped on wood strip temporarily and will fix it permanently tomorrow.
Meanwhile, what can we do for little chick? I'm sure it's painful but I couldn't imagine any of our medicines would be safe. We have some antibiotics on hand (penicillin/amoxicillin), are any of those safe for poultry?
When my mom once had an eye puncture wound, the doctors had her wear an eye patch to keep out the light. Should we consider anything like that for this chick?
Oh, and she's 10 days old.

 

[IvysAnimals]

THIS MIGHT HELP

 

[coach723]

If you have pictures of the eye, it might be helpful. In general, I would flush the eye with eye wash (Veterycin makes one) or sterile saline. Use Terramycin eye ointment in the eye two or three times a day. Many tractor supply stores carry it, if you can't find that then you can use plain neosporin. Depending on the damage, hard to know if the vision will be lost in that eye or not, but you should try to prevent infection. If it has only one good eye it can adapt, but will be at some greater risk from predators.

 

[SourRoses]

Thanks guys.
I couldn't get a very good picture with the phone, but I might be able to get a better one later today after the new memory card for our digital camera arrives. When I pick her up she tends to scrunch her eye shut protectively, so here's a few bad shots with her in the pen.

She hopped out of her basket this morning and has been out with the other chicks. So far she's been protecting herself easily enough. Very active eating and drinking.

 

[coach723]

Can't really tell, maybe it's superficial and will heal up with treatment and be fine. Either way I would do the ointment, make sure no infection sets in, and then you just wait and see if the eye is still functional. Fingers crossed.

 

[SourRoses]

Update:
Yogurt (the leghorn chick) completely recovered. Named thus because we put her Amoxicillin in strawberry yogurt and she loved it so much she would come up to the bars to eat it freely off a spoon twice a day.
All the Leghorns went out to the coop two weeks ago while we wait for the neighbor to get his built. They spend most of the day in the run, and I can't see any sign that Yogurt has any vision issues. Most of the time I can't even tell them apart except when I come close because Yogurt acts more friendly (we don't generally give treats so she's the only one who hopes, lol).
I was able to examine the injury more closely while it was healing and it was definitely a puncture in the white of her eye near the front corner (where human tear ducts are).
Thanks so much everyone for all your help!

 

[coach723]

Thanks for the update. So glad she's recovered and all is well!