Worms?? Eye Infection?? Coincidence???

[GalettaGirls]

Worms or eye infection?? I have a 6 month old hen (1 of 5, same age) whose eye lid looked very slightly swollen yesterday, it barely caught my eye, but she otherwise acted normal. I installed some new chicken wire in a hedge and figured she maybe scratched herself. Today, the eye lid and upper eye area is clearly swollen, pale, and she’s not acting herself (she’s usually extremely social, active and very food motivated). She’s very subdued today, lethargic, and took several minutes to join for some scratch (she normally charges across the yard as soon as she sees us). She’s still fast enough that I wasn’t able to catch her for pictures, but she’s clearly not feeling well. I’ll catch her tonight when she goes back to the coop to roost. I have some polysporin eye drops I planned to use, but then I saw this suspicious pile of droppings in the coop, and a soft egg (I don’t believe she laid it as she’s an olive egger, and the other girls just started laying last week, but the other shells were normal. I don’t know if the soft egg is related at all or just a coincidence??) They have 24 hr access to layer feed, and get grain based scratch & meal worms as a treat, and whatever they rustle up from the lawn and garden. They also have a bowl of roughly crushed egg shells in their run, though I may blend it and add some directly to their food.

All that to say, are the polysporin eye drops enough to deal with this (I’m guessing not?). Or should I find a vet/antibiotics tomorrow? And should I just treat her or everyone as a precaution? I have injectable ivermectin here if that’s helpful, but no antibiotics yet. I also have a dog (regularly wormed) and two young children that help with the chickens, should it be relevant. Dropping pic in comment, and I’ll try add one of her eye

 

[GalettaGirls]

I got some pictures of her eye!

 

[coach723]

You can use the polysporin in her eye a couple of times a day. I would also take her off the roost after dark, or early in the morning and get a close look at it, and flush it out with some sterile saline, look for injury, dirt or debris, any pus. Hopefully that will take care of it if it got dirt or something in there, or got some kind of injury. Look for any discharge from eyes, nares or beak, bubbles in the eye, or plaques or lesions in the mouth, all those would be signs of possible respiratory illness, which can cause facial and around the eyes swelling. I would not give antibiotics yet, unless you saw something indicating an infection. One of your new layers may be having glitches, which can happen when they are just starting until their bodies figure it out. I would keep an eye on them, make sure everyone is acting normally, see if you can ID who is doing it if it continues. Egg shells alone is usually not enough calcium, you need to have crushed oyster shell available for them all the time in a separate feeder. You can mix your egg shells with that 50/50 to stretch it, and they often like it that way (that's what I do). It's better to offer it separately than to mix it in the food, those that need it will take it, those that don't will leave it alone, and that will vary bird to bird and season to season.