Sounds very exciting! Pity it's gone so quickly

What a great experience! And to work with all those animals .

Cannot wait to see some pictures of the Kestrel.

So many birds!!! I would've thought surgical sexing is a risky option when you can just do DNA sexing with feathers or a spot of blood...

So many birds!!! I would've thought surgical sexing is a risky option when you can just do DNA sexing with feathers or a spot of blood...

 

That's a fair point Bea .

Silly Photobucket isn't letting me in! Will try again later.

 

Bea, you're right, DNA sexing is safer. But surgical sexing isn't a huge deal. It's a tiny skin incision in a special area that means the actual abdomen isn't penetrated. Each bird took ten to fifteen minutes then they were back in their cages. As for anaesthetic problems, I will need to investigate the effects but none of them had any problems, and the vet staff didn't seem particularly concerned (as opposed to when we've done rabbit surgery, everyone is in there checking depth of anaesthesia constantly).

I imagine DNA sexing it would take longer because you have to get the bird in, get the sample, wait for it to get to the lab, wait for them to the test then wait for them to send results. It sounded like these people wanted fast over safe. But I'll ask the vet.

Anyway, yes, a drop of blood from the toenail is a much less invasive way to sex your birds.

Sorry for the double post/reviving an old thread, but I thought I'd post some stories/photos.

I wish I had the time to describe every case and all the experiences I had, but the list is way too long!

 

Here are some of the interesting things I did:

-My first operation - desexing a tom cat.

-Beak remodelling for a budgie with severe malformations

-Autopsied a rabbit (myxomatosis - a disease that humans released to wipe out pest rabbits. Unfortunately, it is carried by mosquitoes and can affect pet rabbits) and a wild cockatoo (poor bird had been hit by a car and was way beyond the ability to recover - busted hip, legs, wings, he was in so much pain, poor guy)

-Stood in on lots of surgeries all scrubbed up, and acted as assistant surgeon - this mostly involved me standing there holding things open, (Laughing out loud). I also got to suture closed a few of them. The surgeries included removing a massive grapefruit sized tumour, several speys (including a rabbit), exploratory laparotomy of a dog with a massively swollen belly (turned out to have cancer :hap:), surgical sexing of about 14 birds, and removing an eye from a rabbit with cancer (that was freaky!)

-Helped with many X-rays, including a budgie!

-Stood in on many, many consults

-Gave vaccinations, did clinical exams, took blood, lots of in-house pathology, looked at stuff under the microscope and generally helped diagnose problems

 

And some photos,

A little tiel with 'sick bird look' and too young to eat on his own. He was going to be adopted, so was being observed to see how he would fare. I crop tubed him several times until the vet showed the foster how to do it herself.

 

A duck with a broken wing that we bandaged up. Luckily, it's in his nature not to use it very much anyway!

 

That's bird blood. Bird blood is awesomely cool. They have a nucleus in them! All mammalian mature red blood cells lack nuclei.

 

Bird X-rays. I didn't take this one. Sadly it looks like this canary has a cancer in its abdomen.

 

Blue, the other stray budgie that was brought into the clinic. He was adopted by the founders. Friendlist little guy ever, loved to be on shoulders and talked a lot.

 

This little pup holds a place in my heart... he looked just about ready to drop dead for the first few days. He had massive bloody diarrhoea, which absolutely stank, and it took such a toll on his little body. He just kept getting down and down, despite the fluids and transfusions. He also refused to eat - he was just down to skin and bone. After a few days of "hang in there, please don't die" the canine vet, who is an awesome lady, told me to take the pup out in the sun and just cuddle him. I did this and it filled my heart with joy to see his ears perked up. First go, he took chicken from my hands. I did this several times every day after that - he would only eat if I fed him - and to my pleasure, he perked up, began wagging his tail when he saw me, and finally he was barking and romping around. For that first week we had all thought he was done for. He went home in the second week, and on followup (third week) he was soo excited to see me, and I was overjoyed to see that he had some weight back on! Lesson learnt, you can prescribe all the right medicine, but a bit of love and cuddles can do a lot to help them turn the corner.

 

Wet kitties! We were looking after five extremely young kittens. I don't know the story as they were there when I came, but someone told me it was a charity case. As in, no one actually owned the kittens but we were going to look after them anyway Sadly though, some of them died over the weeks, they were severely undersized for their age. These two though were looking strong and were still there when I left.

 

Some of the birds that were being sexed. These guys were sooo cute. Just babies, so it was harder for the vet to see what sex they were. I got to look through the scope for all the procedures.

 

Finally, the little kestrel. The theory is that he was too young/inexperienced to fly, somehow ending up in a horse's water trough, and then was unable to get out.

Let me outa here!

He didn't have anything wrong with him, besides being rather young and wet, so he went to a wildlife carer.

 

Whoops, enormous post, but so much happened, and it all came flooding out when I started writing about it :hap:

Edited February 24, 200817 yr by Chrysocome

Awsome! I love reading about the things you are doing... What ever happened to that Budgie that had the really bad scaley face?

He went home with one of the vets, as the treatment for scaly face is simple but takes a while. He was also taking up space at the hospital. She has said she will send me photos and updates :hap:

Another happy ending :hap:

thanks for updating us. l always enjoy reading all about your experience :budgiedance:

WOW! What an awesome time you must have with all those different animals! Thanks for sharing and it's great to see behind the scenes :budgiedance:

Wow, what fantastic experiences, though it must be heart breaking at times to see animals in such pain.

 

Reading that, I just want to hurry up and get better and try and get into my own vet course, I'm sure it's alot of work, but worth it in the end.

 

And I didn't know that bird blood cells have nuceli, that is so weird! Well, you learn something new every day.

 

Very nice pictures by the way, the kestrel is just gorgeous. Birds have prey have this 'deadly beauty' about them.

 

...Fantastic news about Little too :ausb: .

It must be so cool to be able to help so many animals. I love the little doggy's story

 

When I was younger I used to have a rabbit called Mandy and he got myxomatosis. We normally vaccinate them against it, but I was told it must be done in Autumn and it was late when I got him, so I would vaccinate him the following year, but he got it :budgiedance: . I will never forget what it does to a rabbit - I assume it attacks the brain or the nerves, as he got mad and was hitting the walls, jumping around. He also had a lot of "fester" coming out of his eyes and nose. Pure guy, I loved him so much, if I knew he will have to go through all this, I would rather have him put to sleep. But the vet told me he will be fine and I believed him He lasted two weeks then he died, I was actually happy for him to die - no more pain

 

Can you treat myxomatosis somehow? I was told there is no treatment, I just have to wait. He said it will get worse and then it shoud start getting better, but Mandy never got to the "better" stage

Maesie: Every single good ending fills me with joy - it never gets old! I wishh they could all be that way.

 

Bec Sta: Work at it :budgiedance: It is indeed hard but it is so gratifying in the end.

 

Zebra:

I'm so sorry to hear about your rabbit While I was at the clinic, we had what felt like a small epidemic on our hands. In Australia, vaccinating them against it is illegal. They believe they will lose their 'weapon' against the pest rabbits, despite clear evidence that the wild rabbits are getting more and more resistant to it. I tell you it is one of the saddest experiences I have ever had. Everything fills with fluid, especially their eyes, and gunk comes out of their eyes/nose. I never saw one near death and I am glad I didn't - apparently it is terrible to watch. Here in Australia it is an absolute death sentence because they have no immunity. The rate is something lke 98% will die, within three weeks of getting it, and that can be as soon as a few days after the signs. There is no treatment for it. We put them to sleep well before the terminal stages you described kick in. If they were immune to it, they would get really bad then get better. But it's not possible here because they just can't be vaccinated

Edited February 25, 200817 yr by Chrysocome

Zebra:

I'm so sorry to hear about your rabbit :hap: While I was at the clinic, we had what felt like a small epidemic on our hands. In Australia, vaccinating them against it is illegal. They believe they will lose their 'weapon' against the pest rabbits, despite clear evidence that the wild rabbits are getting more and more resistant to it. I tell you it is one of the saddest experiences I have ever had. Everything fills with fluid, especially their eyes, and gunk comes out of their eyes/nose. I never saw one near death and I am glad I didn't - apparently it is terrible to watch. Here in Australia it is an absolute death sentence because they have no immunity. The rate is something lke 98% will die, within three weeks of getting it, and that can be as soon as a few days after the signs. There is no treatment for it. We put them to sleep well before the terminal stages you described kick in. If they were immune to it, they would get really bad then get better. But it's not possible here because they just can't be vaccinated :hap:

 

 

Shame, I didn't know there is not good chance fot him to get better, I would never let him go through it - it took about 2 weeks before he died . Every morning before I went to school I would go to him, clean his eyes, nose, etc., that's all I thought I could do. Hope I'll never have to watch something like this again