Wry neck from head injury or vitamin deficiency?

[tangerine]

Hi everyone. So the other night an opossum started attacking a few of the hens who sleep outside. We came out in time to scare him off, but one girl was left injured. She seemed to have a lot of fight left in her, so we isolated her, cleaned the injuries, sprayed on some blue-kote, etc. She was definitely depressed and we had to give her water through a dropper since she seemed to have a small piece of her beak cracked. She suffered a long gash across her back, pulled feathers from an area about 3 square inches, as well as a gash on the top of her head...

So that happened Monday night and today, Saturday, we got up to find she's developing wry neck. Since she hasn't been eating well, we're wondering if it could be vitamin deficienty (although before the incident, we fed her normal layer crumbles so she should have had pretty good nutrition up until the injury). The other possibility is her head injury. It's hard to tell how bad the gash is, but do you think it wouldn've taken this long (5 days) to develop wry neck from that?

We're thinking if she makes it until tomorrow we'll start treating w/ vitamin E. Today we started getting her to drink some vitamins & electrolytes mix from Tractor Supply. We also gave her some antibiotics in her water and were able to get some yogurt in her. Any other advice of what to try? What do you think is the cause of her wry neck - vitamins (from not eating much these past 5 days) or the head injury? BTW, she's a standard Russian Orloff.
Thanks for any info., encouragement or advice! Do you think she has any chance of recovery?

 

[Eggcessive]

I think her wry neck is from the injury. I would still treat her with B complex and Vitamin E and selenium though for a couple of weeks to see if it helps. Hopefully you have stopped your hens from sleeping outside of the coop. It may mean leaving them inside 24/7 for a week to get them used to going in at night, but you will lose them for sure with predators around. I would use some Neosporin ointment on her wounds to keep them soft and help again infection. You can probably repair her cracked beak. http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2013/01/repairing-chickens-broken-beak.html

 

[tangerine]

Hi, thanks for replying! I tend to agree about the head injury, though I will treat anyway with the vitamins as long as she is hanging on. She's sleeping in an extra rabbit hutch we have. We've got the other (former) free-ranging hen in with our larger flock in a secure enclosure, as we were sure that opossum would be back! We originally had to turn them out since they were not getting along & were eating eggs. They seem to be getting along a bit better right now. We'll keep working on this hen and see what happens...