Hen attacked by hawk, head laceration, injury to her 'good' eye. Need advice for my chicken baby.

[missmissi]

I've heard that newspaper shouldn't be used because of the ink. If you replaced the outdoor rug with a large plastic tray or something similar to cover the entire bottom of the crate to about an 1 1/2 inches deep, you could put sand in there. Great for traction and better for her feet, she can take sand baths to keep her feathers in good order and its a very easy clean up, kind of like clumping kitty litter.

I'm making my own yogurt this morning using my egg incubator. I just heat 1 gallon of milk to 100 F, I don't add sugar because the natural dairy milk has plenty of that already, so I add 2 heaping tbsp of plain, unflavored bought yogurt, put it in a bowl add it to my incubator and maintain it at about 95-100F for 8 hours.
I fed a treat today of their chick feed, yogurt and mashed banana. They loved it! It was gone in a flash.

I want her to have traction on the floor, otherwise she could develop splayed leg from slipping around - though I would love to just pick up newspapers every day! Diapers should be here next week I like the idea of sand. Currently there is scratch and greens on her floor, and she is definitely scratching around today, she's eating about half as much as she throws! I don't know if she could find food in the sand, especially since she cant see it, she's going completely by touch now. She ate a lot of the spinach this morning, awesome, and is acting totally normal in her private coop today. So I'm going to leave her alone, to 'bump' around a little until tonight when it's time for eye ointment. She even found her bowl of mush (regular feed softened by Pedialite with baby food versions of her favorite fruits and veggies she would eat outside) I left for her this morning, but she didn't locate the water bowl yet - I could tell because it's the only thing that's still clean.

Babe is a Barred Rock. She's laid 1 or 2 eggs every day since she started. She was the last of the bunch to begin laying eggs, we believe it's due to her slower mental capacity, eh. She laid every day even through her recent molt in late November. We haven't seen an egg in 4 days now. I'll put a nesting box in with her this week. She will be out walking around with me later, but she's content right now. A humble 3.5lb chicken, that was pounced on by a bird 5x her size, was cracked in the head so hard to cause a running stream of blood and to provide the force to shove her face into the ground hard enough to puncture her eye. And she didn't die. The blunt force head trauma alone is staggering.

I have no idea what I'm doing. Thank you for your support, it helps ALOT.

 

[Stewarts]

Listen, as far as I'm concerned, you are doing a FANTASTIC job with her. She's a very pretty bird and what happened to her is very traumatic. The fact that she survived at all and is starting to flourish under your care and attention proves she's a fighter and deserves very chance. Maybe once she does get onto where all her food and water dishes are you can introduce her to a small sand area for her bath. A nesting box would help to encourage her in egg laying. All she needs is time to recover and re-learn. I'd love to see a picture of those diapers!

 

[missmissi]

I've heard that newspaper shouldn't be used because of the ink. If you replaced the outdoor rug with a large plastic tray or something similar to cover the entire bottom of the crate to about an 1 1/2 inches deep, you could put sand in there. Great for traction and better for her feet, she can take sand baths to keep her feathers in good order and its a very easy clean up, kind of like clumping kitty litter.

I'm making my own yogurt this morning using my egg incubator. I just heat 1 gallon of milk to 100 F, I don't add sugar because the natural dairy milk has plenty of that already, so I add 2 heaping tbsp of plain, unflavored bought yogurt, put it in a bowl add it to my incubator and maintain it at about 95-100F for 8 hours.
I fed a treat today of their chick feed, yogurt and mashed banana. They loved it! It was gone in a flash.

I bet they liked the yogurt! Mine seem partial to warm oatmeal with molasses and peach chunks on a cold day. I make a big batch, drop big spoonfuls on a pan and bake them at 400 for 25 minutes. Then I have oatmeal cookies for the goats and horses which are everybody's favorite.

 

[missmissi]

Update for Babe:

4 weeks indoors and she decided it was time to go outside. We have one other hen, Rosebud. Babe follows Rosebud's lead on time to come down from the roost in the morning and when to go inside for the night. The two of them free range during the day and are safely tucked away in Fort Knox for chickens at night. With only 50% visibility in her good/undamaged eye, I guess she remembers a lot about her environment outdoors, because she is quite independent and doing well. She's losing weight again, I'm going to need to address that, she went from 3.5 pounds at the time of her injury to 5.5 pounds during her time indoors - yaaaaayyy!

We have 6 new baby chicks living indoors until it's consistently warmer at night and they are big enough to defend themselves or run away in case threatened by any other animals here; cat, chickens, goats, horses. Babe's neurological issues prevail, I'm not sure what she will think of the little ones, but I don't think she could peck them much, her aim is terrible. I would bet money that Babe will end up surviving all of the other chickens we have here! She's a hearty, strong girl.

Thanks for you advice and prayers. Just wanted to share that I took your advice(s) and what worked for us here.