Swollen around the eye?

[bokbokbacok]

Hello! My family and I are new to raising chickens. We have and are very hands on with our 10 pullets. From day one, we have been handling them and they really have become family. We know each and every one's individual personalities. We actually are quite over protective at times and probably paranoid....BUT tonight when we last checked the hen house and put them to bed (11:30) we noticed that one of our reds (her name is PILOT) has one eye that is swollen. It is swollen around the eye but not directly the eye. Does that make sense? It is a complete circle of swollen area. There is NO discharge of any kind and this developed in the evening at some point. I'm not aware of any injury. She jumped off her perch and was feeding normally. I would say the only other sypmtom is she is giving me the same long drawn out noise she gives me when I call them to the coop. Pilot is ALWAYS the last to come into the coop. Any way, we did seperate her from the others and I tried to do some on-line searching but only overwhelmed myself with mostly worry. Can anyone point us in the right direction?

Thank you!
Jodie and Andrew

 

[americanvalkyrie]

Does she have any odd odor coming from her head? Facial swelling makes me first think about coryza.

I have The Chicken Health Handbook, which lists diseases by symptoms. Swollen around eyes leads to aspergillosis (rare,) infectious coryza (common,) paratyphoid (common,) cholera (not common,) or nutritional roup (rare.)

I would research the two most common ones first.

 

[featherz]

Chicken sinuses run around their eyes like that, so it's most likely a sinus infection - can be caused by coryza and mycoplasma, just off the top of my head. As the poster above me asked, any bad odor? sneezing?

 

[bokbokbacok]

The swelling is really the only sypmtom. There is no sneezing and no drainage. It is strange because its the only symptom so far. Our flock is not exposed to other flocks either, nor have we introduced any new birds to the group. We do free range the chickens during most of the time from morning until we close the coop at night. My husband was concerned maybe about the wild bird feeders that we have? If anything could be transmitted to our flock from wild bird droppings or if the chickens eat the left over bird seed that has dropped to the ground. I will take a picture this morning and post it of Pilot's eye. If this is one of those deseases mentioned....are we in danger of losing her and the flock?

 

[bokbokbacok]

There is no sneezing and no discharge around eye or notsrils of any kind and no odor. Now, I feel badly because I seperated her into a 4 x 4 cage. But in doing so, I see that her ear lobe is also swollen on the same side. I hope to add some pictures here. The first is her good side....the second two are of her swollen side.

Pilot's good side....

 

[bokbokbacok]

Her last picture is of me holding her head gently pressed so to extend her ear lobe. So....how should I treat her?

 

[featherz]

Mycoplasma G. (which can cause swollen eyes like that) can be transmitted by wild birds. Could also be an eye infection of course. If it's mycoplasma, you can treat with antibiotics like Tylan or Denagard (tylan is at the feed store, denagard is mail order only afaik).

If an eye infection, you can try terramycin eye ointment.

Mortality is pretty low with mycoplasma, just know that the bird will be a carrier and the disease could pop up again when the bird is under stress. If you aren't planning to sell hatching eggs or birds and you aren't adding to your flock or taking your chickens to shows, you can certainly treat for this.

I'll wait for other experts to weigh in as it could be something entirely different, especially if no others are showing symptoms.

Oh and don't feel bad for separating, you did the right thing.

 

[americanvalkyrie]

When my chickens had it, I locked them in the coop for 2 days with Sulmet and Duramycin in their water. (They're free-ranged and I have a pond, so I had to be sure that the only water available to them was medicated.) I did have to cull the 8-wk-old chicks that got sick before I figured out what it was, but I managed to save the rest of the flock. My 2-wk-old chicks and my year-old laying hens got it, and though egg production is down, they're all recovered and strutting around the yard.

But I was all ready to cull the others, if I had to. I wasn't sure if I had coryza or infectious bronchitis, since some got swollen faces and some just got congestion. But we managed to have a 100% survival rate once we got treatment going.

If you treat laying hens, withdraw eggs until 2 weeks after the last dose. I just scrambled the eggs up and fed them back to the chickens, so they didn't go to waste.

Oh, and ours wasn't caused by introducing new birds to the flock. But my neighborhood is HUGE on backyard chickens. The nearest coop is a block away, then one on the next block, and the next... I also have wild birds and field mice getting into my yard, the biggest downside of letting them free-range. I figure it came in on a mouse or a bird, so there's nothing I can do to completely erradicate it. So I just keep medicine onhand, watch out for the symptoms, and don't share my birds with ANYONE! I have some beautiful chicks that are turning out to be roosters, but if I give them away, I could be giving someone a bird that's a carrier for whatever we caught. So even my silver spangled hamburg roo is going to go in the stewpot.

 

[bokbokbacok]

All of this is interesting and informative and I HIGHLY appreciate it. Is there any harm in treating both ways at the same time? I mean by treating her with the Tylan and by treating the water with Sulmet and Duramycin? The rest of the flock still seems to be symptom free. I suppose they WILL end up showing signs at some point? In the meantime...she's really not happy in the 4x4 and I brought her into our breezeway to keep her safe for the night. I wanna jump on this since this is now 24 hours I'm looking at. I will go and find those medications in the morning. Keeping them on hand sounds like a good idea too. When can I introduce her back to the flock? And, I definately think it probably came from the wild birds or chipmunks who are always dumping the feeders. Thank you for all of your contributions!!
Jodie

 

[americanvalkyrie]

I honestly don't know the details on that. I know that you shouldn't treat birds that aren't sick. And I know that, if I hadn't treated, I would have lost all of my birds. So I took a chance and did it.

Wish I could give you a more technical answer on that. But... the doses I gave the laying hens were equal to doses allowed for baby chicks. So I know I didn't give them toxic amounts.