Week 6- Raptors! Cacaw!

This week I'm hanging out down at the Southeast Raptor Rehabilitation Center.  The facility takes in wild raptors (i.e. birds of prey) that have been injured or little nestlings that have been separated from their parents.  The birds that are taken in usually have radiographs, a fecal (poop examination) and a CBC (bloodwork) done to assess their condition.  Sometimes, there is nothing that can be done for the birds and they have to be euthanized.  But often, they are able to give the birds medical attention and eventually re-release them or find an appropriate place for them to live.

This morning we learned how to properly restrain the birds so as not to be impaled by their talons and lose a finger to their beaks (kidding...kinda). We use big leather gloves and support their head/neck while holding their legs.  After that, we went through and weighed all the babies (A-DOR-ABLE).  There was one baby screech owl, two vultures (NOT adorable) and two great horned owls.  The screech owls are itty bitty and they come in three colors: grey, red or brown.  The vultures are...well sorry but those things are ugly.  The great horned owls look like your stereotypical owl, they are just plain cool.  So we weighed all the wee ones and then we did the morning feeding.  Some of the birds are in pretty bad shape and won't eat on their own so we have to "assist feed" them.  The owls, hawks and vultures eat rodents.  Due to some school regulation, they aren't allowed to feed live animals at the facility so the birds get gourmet frozen rodents, yummo!  Maybe this is disgusting to normal people, but I found it super awesomely cool to be able to hand feed rat parts to an owl.  You kind of have to stuff it down their throat to get them to eat it, but who can resist a tasty rat head??

After feedings, we had to get blood from a few of our winged pals.  We drew blood from the jugular vein of the birds.  The jugular vein can actually be seen through the skin because there is an area with no feathers and their skin is super thin.  Birds usually have about 6-10mls of blood per 100 grams of body weight and it's safe to take about 10% of that.  However, we don't usually need more than 0.5mls for a CBC and some blood smears.  The birds we were working with ranged from about 450-900 g so 0.5mls is no big deal.

Later on, some people brought in a duck (definitely NOT a raptor) with a head wound that was deep enough to expose his skull.  Sometimes, the Raptor Center is able to accept non-raptors if they choose to do so.  We decided to keep the duck and do what we could to address his wound.  He didn't show any signs of pain and besides having a horrendous aroma, he was actually pretty cute. Here's a picture of him!

And here's his wound...

Ouch buddy! We put some topical antibacterial cream on his wound and we're hoping that some granulation tissue will form and the wound will be able to close.  We are concerned that there isn't enough tissue to cover the area and that it may pull what tissue is still there making it difficult for him to blink/close his eyes. We'll just have to wait and see how he does.

We also did some radiographs on two of the birds but I'm hoping to get pictures of those to post so I'll save that for another day this week. Tomorrow, we're headed to the Montgomery Zoo. Apparently, it can be hit or miss whether they have things for us to see so we'll just have to wait and find out.

Good night to all and good luck to my pre-clin pals on your CPE tomorrow! You're gonna rock it!