Last Days in ARCAS

**Warning, there are necropsy pictures in this blog**

The morning of July the 4th we woke up to some very sad news. The Armadillo we had been treating unfortunately passed away.  We did everything we could to get him to pull through, but medicine doesn’t always prevail. At the request of Dr. Rudy we were permitted to do a necropsy with his supervision in order to find out the cause of death. 

When doing the necropsy on the armadillo, we found that he had a discoloured cranial-ventral lobe of his lung. This is otherwise described as bronchopneumonia. We also found foam in the trachea. Dr. Rudy believes that this was the cause of death, and it can probably be attributed to a previous owner tube feeding or force feeding. If some of this food was aspirated, it would have moved into his lung and caused bronchopneumonia. Obviously this is an important lesson for any individuals who rescue any type of animal. It is important to know the risks of force-feeding, and how to properly restrain or hold an animal for feeding. 

On July the 5th we were able to partake in the handling lab with Dr. Fernando and Dr. Rudy. As we are obviously beginners with handling parrots, Dr. Fernando wanted us to practice on the young parrots first. He had us practice our distance exam, which allowed us to pick out those parrots which we thought may not being doing as well. Often these parrots will have feathers sticking up on their head and will be less reactive to people. He then spent time showing us how to properly handle a parrot. He stressed that handling parrots is all about TECHNIQUE and not about FORCE. Something that is very important because inexperienced individuals can kill a parrot if they don’t learn how to properly handle them. The parrots have a notch under their beak in which you can insert your thumb, you then wrap your index and middle finger around the head to control the top of the head. At the other end of the animal, you ensure you have their feet and wings enclosed in your hands. After this, we were coached through catching a parrot and examining it. Dr. Fernando made it very clear to us that a lot of wildlife medicine is done from distance exam.

This is because many of the animals are not used to humans, and therefore, putting them through a physical is extremely stressful. It is totally different than how we handle domestic animals. 
Physical exam on a parrot;
First we were instructed to look at the body condition. In order to this, you feel over the keel. The keel is the bone that is an extension of the sternum (it runs midline down the chest and abdomen of a bird). If it feels like the keel is the valley in between two mountains, the parrot is overweight. If it feels like the keel forms a natural curve with the abdomen, then the parrot is a good weight. If it feels like the keel is the tip of a triangle, than the parrot is too skinny. These are very rough examples, but hopefully you get the idea. Next we look at the keel to ensure that it runs in a straight line. As we talked about earlier, calcium deficiency can cause deformities in the keel. Then we look at the wings. We learned how to assess feather quality, and that normally you should count 21 flight feathers. We also looked for stress lines (we will include a picture later) and felt for crepitus and fractures in the wings. 
Dr. Fernando then performed a physical exam on an adult parrot which we watched. The adult parrots are a lot stronger and more dangerous to handle. You can tell that he has years of experience because he restrains them so easily and with such little stress to the parrots. 

 

Lastly, we were able to learn how to handle a baby kinkajou. Kinkajous are absolutely adorable. Unfortunately, when they become older or if they aren’t used to humans they are much more aggressive, so we practiced on a young hand-reared kinkajou.  Kinkajous like to wrap their limbs around things in order to steady themselves. Therefore, to handle them you allow the kinkajou to feed its head through your index and middle finger, and then wrapped your thumb, ring finger and pinkie finger around the back of its head (not tightly!) and then allow it to wrap is limbs around the forearm.

This blog has gone on way too long, but the things we did those two days were amazing. 
As always, hope you enjoyed the post!

Terri