Yeah she is my indoor chicken at the moment, I swear this one is disaster prone, but it only makes me love her more.
Do you have any idea how to clean it? I just used warm water to whip away the blood. I want to make sure it doesn't get infected. Is there some product I should use?
I don't know what you should do at all.
I almost always just leave them alone because I think that they do best when I don't fiddle with them and they can just live where they're used to living/sleeping/eating and not have me interfering and stressing them out. I know stress on animals makes it harder to heal. However, I cannot say that my way is best; it's just what I feel comfortable with.
As for cleaning ... warm water is probably not going to hurt a thing. But once that's been done, would it need to be done more? Maybe, I guess, if there is a lot of junk floating around in the coop, but there's every chance that she's already immune to everything she comes in contact with in her coop and eyes do often flush themselves out.
As for infection ... I don't know. You'll have to go with your gut. I know I (me, the human) can use the eyedrops with boric acid (listed as an inert ingredient) and keep myself from getting pink eye. And keep my hands out of my eyes. But I have no idea about a chicken's eye. Plus they have that extra eyelid. And do you really want to force her eye open and possibly damage it? Or does she sometimes open it. I'm all for hands off and she'll get better, but I can't guarantee that will work.
If no one else joins this thread by tomorrow late morning, I'd start a new thread where the title is something like: What is a good eyewash for my hen so her eye doesn't get infected after a hawk attack? Someone out there has likely used something for eye infection prevention.
I'd certainly give her some vitamins. Just do a search on Poly-Vi-Sol with no iron and someone will have the dosage for a chick. They're found in the baby section of stores. No iron. And infections are most easily fought when a body isn't protein deprived. A nice source of protein is canned fish, but not too much for a bantam. Only a teaspoon in the morning and one in the evening should be plenty, at least that's what I think.
