Silkie chick with eye problem.. Advice Pretty Please!!

[SourRoses]

Hi!
I have 3, 1 week old Silkie Chicks. Very healthy and active. Yesterday, I noticed something odd with my favorite little girl (think shes a girl)... Right below her left eye, she is missing some down fluff... the other eye has the normal puffy fluff, as do the other chicks eye areas. I picked her up and tried to examine her yesterday... I was mostly concerned to see that her actual eye was OK.. and it seemed to me it was.. she was moving it, and seemed to be holding it as open as the other eye. My initial thought was that one of the chicks had pecked at her and plucked some down out. As she is the sweetest, most docile of them, and seems to be bossed around a bit. I also wondered if maybe she had been basking too close under the heat lamp and singed it? We had a very temporary temp spike in there due to our weather... but I dont know if the heat lamp could singe something as high above the brooder as it was?
Today I looked at her again because I thought she was holding the eye a little more closed than the other. The eye looks fine, to me anyway, its clear and just like everyone elses eyes. But she seems to be missing even more fur there today.. some is gone above and to the sides of her eye as well... either that or it just looks weird to me as she has some shorter down in the area (maybe some growing back?). It also appears kind of damp or sticky, like when the chicks first hatched, but theres no puss or anything like that... and her fluff in all the surrounding areas is perfectly dry and fluffy. I also notice she seems to be scratching that side of her face with her foot an awful lot. Is she just making herself tear up a bit from scratching?
Sorry if thats confusing. Does anyone have any ideas on what might have caused this? Or anything I should look out for? I dont want anything to happen to any of my beautiful Silkie babies... and she is my favorite sweetie-pie

Thank you!

 

[dawg53]

I'm not familiar with silkies, I only have standards. But it sounds like she's been scratching herself around her eye causing the fluff loss. The dampness could be caused by a small piece of fluff going in her eye causing the eye to water...much like when we get something in our eye, it waters. She may have scratched too close to her eye, causing it to water as well. At one week of age, they'll start losing their fluff and feathers start to grow and chicks tend to scratch the fluff off them....this is normal, at least in standard chicks. Just to be sure and I doubt your silkies have any, check for lice too.