horrific swollen eye, eww!

[punkyo]

So, we established from an earlier thread that three of our chickies have pox. They are separated from the flock and living in the house right now. All of them have their eyes swollen shut, but we are giving them a soaking in Vetricyn twice a day and the sores are definitely looking better. They still can't open them, but we are on the upswing.

The first bird to get sick, though, isn't improving much. It doesn't look nearly as red and angry, but her left eye is swelling more every day. It is about the size of a walnut and firm. Is there something we should be doing about this? We're already giving antibiotics in her water.

 

[CapricornFarm]

That looks like infectious coryza. It must hurt I would put her down.

 

[Cherstin]

I might be off-base here, but my flock had pox a few years ago and it never affected any of their eyes. You say you have three out of your flock with eyes swollen shut? Something doesn't sound right to me. Pox are the raised bumps on the combs, legs, wattles, but your bird here seems to have some sort of brown discharge from the nose. Sure, a pox might *happen* to come up on an eye, but if you have three with eyes swollen shut, that to me sounds like you've got something else going on.

I just want to give this a bump so hopefully someone who can be for sure on this will give some advice. Good luck to you and your flock.

 

[Cherstin]

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/common-chicken-illnesses-and-treatments.html

 

[punkyo]

We're totally new to chickens- we've only had these guys a month. Are we going to end up losing the whole flock? One of the sick birds is my kids' favorite, it is going to be awful enough to have to put her down. I really don't want to lose them all.

 

[kari_dawn]

from everything I have read here on BYC, I would have to agree that it looks like coryza...I would also have to state that coryza is a very bad prognosis...

 

[angie3881]

The article says even if they get better, they will carry the disease for life. It is difficult but I don't see how you have any choice but to put them down.

 

[Cherstin]

Quote:
PS: Not saying this article is gospel or anything ... I'd just done a quick Google search about pox and if swollen eyes was a symptom, and this is the first thing that came up that happened to have them sort-of side by side as a comparison. Still hoping others will chime in, but yes, I'm of the opinion that it might be a bad prognosis.

Can you give a little more info, though? How long has this been going on? What kind of antibiotic are you adding to their water, and how much? How can you be sure they're all getting the amount of medication they need? How many are showing signs, and when is the last time that one began to show a symptom? How are the other ones?

 

[punkyo]

We got all of our birds a month ago. One buttercup died about four days later, after looking kind of sleepy for a couple of days. Another buttercup died about a week ago, also after being sluggish but none of this swollen face business. Neither of them showed any other sign of being sick.

These ones with the bad eyes started about a week and a half ago. First the buttercup in the picture just had a shut eye. It wasn't swollen or red, just shut. Then the other eye started looking red, and developing nasty welts on her eyes and comb. Then the other buttercup. And then an ameraucana (our favorite bird!) started looking red around the eyes. I posted here several days ago and the welts seemed to look like pox, so we pulled the sick birds out, disinfected the coop, and kept these ones in the house. The remaining birds in the coop still seem to be just fine. The ameraucana was the last to come down with this, I'm pretty sure we pulled her out on Monday.

The antibiotics are Tetroxy HCA-280, mixed at the recommended dose. We are dosing the birds in the coop as well, although none of them have shown any signs of being sick.

It took two years to talk my husband into chickens. He built a huge coop and predator-proof run. We're going to be heartbroken if we have to kill the whole flock.

 

[ChickieBooBoo]

It looks similar to a Silkir roo I had awhile back. Me and a friend opened up the swollen part, got as much of the puss and stuff out as we could and let him heal. I rinsed it out x2 a day for about a week and the swollen part went down on its own.