Sometimes those little cuts are hard to see. Volo had a small cut at the ventral anterior halux, distal to the postirior tarsal metaphysis (now, didn't that sound just as big deal as can be ?? ;D) It was at the back of the hind toe in the fold under the leg. We think she got it crashing into some cover after a wabbit. We checked her feet everytime she was handled, especially after a hunt. The location of this cut made it really hard to see. It was partially healed before we found it. We cleaned it well and applied antibacterial ointments, but quite frankly, i think it was well on it's way to healing without our help. We were just luck. That could have been disasterous!
Ventral?? Posterior?? .....I thought you were getting fresh with us ;D
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
Oooo! Talk about being kicked when your down.......Are you sure your last name isn't Murphy?
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
Hey FB, Should we have the Diseases section moved into this area under Raptor health? It's currently in trouble shooting.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
Just wanted to keep this thread alive as it was getting some good results. ;D
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
When I was at the vets office last night, I was asking if they where close to getting an avian vaccine out for WNV yet and he said that he hadn't heard anything lately from Dr Redig. They did, however, come out with a new Equine vaccine. It apparently does away with all the birth defects etc. that the horses had been coming down with from the old one and it works very well at defending them to the virus. Unfortunatly, this cannot be used with our birds as the vaccine was produced using a culture of virus from a canary. This would make our birds directly infected with the virus so they would become sick instead of immune......*sigh*....someday we will have a better one in place......
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
Post by Master Yarak on Jul 28, 2004 17:13:53 GMT -5
I think it is funny what 21st century falconers deal with. What must it have been like during the dark ages. My how things change... and how they stay the same. Raptor health is easy. Just prevent the problems from occuring in the first place. For those of us who know him, literally " Thank God for Greg Moore DVM." Yarak
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away
The people from way back when falconry originated had it great! They didn't have to worry too much about their bird being shot, finding a bird, getting a sponsor, or worrying about passing a test. They just went out, got a bird, taught it how to hunt and kept it as long as they liked. Ah for the good old days!
[glow=purple,2,300]So, whatever happened to the birdthat was missing its' talon? Looks like my brothers dog who lost a toenail from them not being trim properly. However, this is a different scenario. Plus more questions, I like the class! ;D[/glow]
Never settle.
"There's nothing like the feeling of knowing that you've made a difference in someone's life, even if that difference is a lifetime of nightmares and a fortune in therapy bills." - Marilyn Manson
Report: Raptors euthanized in error Auburn University misdiagnosed disease, study says Tuesday, August 24, 2004 Posted: 1:25 PM EDT (1725 GMT) Bald eagles are one of many breeds that Auburn's vet school treats each year.
AUBURN, Alabama (AP) -- When several birds fell ill last year at Auburn University's respected raptor center, experts were shocked and puzzled by the explanation that the culprit was a lethal disease never seen before in birds of prey.
The disbelief has only magnified following an independent study that found the disease had been misdiagnosed -- and that officials at the haven for hundreds of injured birds had hastily decided to euthanize "otherwise healthy animals."
"It just seemed like the trigger got pulled a little early, before they knew what they were dealing with," said Patrick Redig, director of the University of Minnesota's Raptor Center and one of the study authors.
The findings by Redig and a colleague were sent to Auburn and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in January but were not released to the public. The AP recently obtained a copy of the report and related documents.
Instead of a microorganism -- or a later theory, malnutrition -- the report blames faulty laboratory techniques and poor decision-making for the spate of deaths, which in part led to the firing of the center's director.
Some 25 birds at Auburn's Southeastern Raptor Rehabilitation Center died between November 2002 and the summer of 2003 -- 17 of them by euthanasia to prevent the disease, Mycoplasma gallisepticum, from spreading to other birds.
But Redig, director of the University of Minnesota's Raptor Center, and colleague Andre Ziegler, a pathologist at the university's Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, found that the tests used to determine if the disease was present in the birds are appropriate for poultry -- not for raptors.
"Birds were being euthanized primarily due to false positive results," Ziegler wrote.
Timothy Boosinger, dean of Auburn's vet school, said the center's actions were appropriate given the information administrators had at the time. He said not much is known about mycoplasma infections and the center needed to take appropriate steps when the tests came back positive.
"I felt like we did everything we could do at each point in time based on the data we had," Boosinger said. "We pursued the diagnostics and the research to get a definitive answer as fast as we could."
The center treats 400 to 500 birds from across the Southeast each year. Raptors are meat-eating birds of prey with sharp talons and hooked beaks that include eagles, hawks, falcons and owls.
After deciding the birds didn't have Mycoplasma gallisepticum, Auburn officials blamed the birds' deaths on a vitamin A deficiency. As evidence they noted open sores, or lesions, in some of the birds' mouths.
However, Redig said that was a "working hypothesis, but not a definitive diagnosis" based on the records he had reviewed. Ziegler said only one bird was suffering from malnutrition.
"I am uncomfortable with the universal declaration of Dean Boosinger when he stated 'severe malnutrition played a major role in the death of many of the birds,"' Ziegler wrote.
Instead, Redig wrote, the main reason for the deaths seemed to be that the false positive test results fell upon "an organization in which there may have been some ambiguous leadership, fuzzy reporting lines and poorly supported decision-making authority."
Boosinger disputes that account, saying "the reporting lines were clear."
Joe Shelnutt, who was fired as the raptor center's director in the middle of the crisis, disputed any suggestion that he had mismanaged the birds' health and diets. He said the official reason given for his June 2003 firing was insubordination.
Shelnutt said Auburn officials began blaming malnutrition three months after he and his staff had left the raptor center. Even if there had been a nutritional problem on his watch, he said it wouldn't have gone undetected so long.
"You wouldn't all of a sudden have a nutritional deficiency that ran through your entire population at one time," he said.
A year after the deaths, the parties involved appear ready to move on.
Auburn's raptor center has hired a new director and is back to performing shows for schoolchildren and other groups. And Boosinger said raptor experts everywhere will gain from Auburn's experience.
"The good news is that we now know more about mycoplasmas in birds of prey than probably any center in the world," he said. "And that work is being published, it's been presented, and I think it will be of great benefit to other programs."
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."