- Jan 4, 2015
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We have a 4 month old hen that has had eye issues from hatch. We purchased her from a feed store and realized that one of her eyes was very swollen. We did some research and the best we could determine, it was a birth defect causing her eye/eye socket to not be formed correctly. Her first week or so of life, she was very lethargic and just wanted to sleep. After a while, she slowly became more energetic and started to act like a normal chick.
After a while, her eye no longer protruded from her face as much, and we thought that the eye had possibly ruptured (we had seen that the bad eye was milky looking so we had already assumed and accepted she would most likely be blind on that side. Additionally, she was a few weeks behind in development when compared with her other flock members. Her friends would have already fully developed feathers and she would barely have a couple of feathers starting.
We had noticed it starting to want to weep a little and we were concerned about infection, so we started flushing with saline solution and putting in Vetericyn Plus eye drops once to two times a day. A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that she had a yellow yolky looking substance in her eye. We determined from research it was pus. We continued treating and trying to nudge it out, and she eventually ended up getting it out herself. This happened once more before I'm writing today. It appears she has some swelling directly above and under where her eye was/is. It also is weepy.
Does anyone have any idea what could possibly be causing this and how to treat it? I've looked for information, but from what I could determine, she's a special case since she's had issues like this from birth. She has no other symptoms of a respiratory infection (no runny nose, sneezing, wheezing, etc) and no bubbles in that eye. It's just slightly swollen and she doesn't like us trying to touch it. She's eating well and such a sweet little girl. We put warm water on it this morning and treated with Vetericyn as usual. Any advice would be appreciated.
I've attached a current photo of both her good eye and her bad eye for comparison.
After a while, her eye no longer protruded from her face as much, and we thought that the eye had possibly ruptured (we had seen that the bad eye was milky looking so we had already assumed and accepted she would most likely be blind on that side. Additionally, she was a few weeks behind in development when compared with her other flock members. Her friends would have already fully developed feathers and she would barely have a couple of feathers starting.
We had noticed it starting to want to weep a little and we were concerned about infection, so we started flushing with saline solution and putting in Vetericyn Plus eye drops once to two times a day. A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that she had a yellow yolky looking substance in her eye. We determined from research it was pus. We continued treating and trying to nudge it out, and she eventually ended up getting it out herself. This happened once more before I'm writing today. It appears she has some swelling directly above and under where her eye was/is. It also is weepy.
Does anyone have any idea what could possibly be causing this and how to treat it? I've looked for information, but from what I could determine, she's a special case since she's had issues like this from birth. She has no other symptoms of a respiratory infection (no runny nose, sneezing, wheezing, etc) and no bubbles in that eye. It's just slightly swollen and she doesn't like us trying to touch it. She's eating well and such a sweet little girl. We put warm water on it this morning and treated with Vetericyn as usual. Any advice would be appreciated.
I've attached a current photo of both her good eye and her bad eye for comparison.
