I spent the past two weeks working at a small animal/exotics
practice in Johannesburg that primarily sees birds. I was completing my “Primary Care” rotation,
which can be done either at my school or out in the real world. Primary care
consists of all the normal general practice things like vaccinations, itchy
skin, and your average vomiting cat. I
chose to do this rotation in South Africa so that I could extend my stay in the
country and also to get a feel for baseline care here. I chose this practice because my good friend
works here and I wanted to brush up on my birds.
I have always loved bird-watching, but birds are not my
favorite when it comes to dealing with them up close. I find them kind of creepy. Tiny dinosaurs, right? However, since my degree says I can practice
on any animal, I felt that maybe I should turn my bird frown upside-down. I have been working at it slowly since I
started school. I definitely don’t hate
birds now and, the more I learn, I can see that they are actually quite
cool. But, there are still large gaps in
my most basic bird knowledge.
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| Wings & nails |
I spent the first few days observing from the exam room to
the surgical suite (called “theater” here).
The majority of the birds we saw came in for “wings and nails” which
consists of trimming the first 5 feathers of the wing and the nails either
getting dremeled or soldered to an acceptable length. The first 5 feathers at the tip of the wing
help initiate flight and the next ones in help the bird turn and stop. If you trim the first 5 then the bird can’t
take off which helps keep pet birds from flying away. A bird that flies away
here could easily survive in the wild because of the warm climate. The most popular birds in SA (African Grey,
Cockatoo, Cockatiel, Ringneck, Macaw) are not indigenous and could create
problems for the local birds. In fact a
few “strays” came in while I was at the clinic.
Those birds were kept, tested for beak and feather disease, and sent out
for adoption if the owner could not be found.
Some other frequently seen conditions:
Feather cysts (have to be removed surgically)
Injury from landing too hard on the ground
Fractures of the wing/legs
Feather chewing (can be fixed by “imping” or gluing on a
surrogate feather)
The ol’ down-with-seeds nutrition talk
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| Bird emergency support care |
There were a number of birds that presented in severe
distress. Birds are prey species and
excellent at hiding their ailments. When
a bird is acutely & severely sick it is not likely that it will make it out
alive. At least 5 birds came in this way
with various problems/clinical signs and none of them survived. The Catch-22 is that the more you handle a
sick bird to fix it, the more stressed it gets, and the more likely it is to
die. Sometimes you just can’t win. This is hard for everyone, especially the
owners who just saw their bird acting fine an hour ago and now it’s dead. As they say in South Africa, “Ag shame,
man.”
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| Look at me, Ma! (secretly freaking out inside!) |
I did a lot of basic bird techniques during this
rotation. I practiced basic handling
which, funny enough, is not that different in principle from handling any other
animal. The number one rule of animal
handling is “control the head.” When you
control an animal’s head the rest *usually* follows. Also you tend to get bitten less. For birds it is best to use a towel so you
can kind of burrito their wings and body as you grasp around the head with your
thumb and forefinger. Birds look like
they have thick necks, but it’s all feather fluff. They actually have quite scrawny necks. For larger birds you can just hold them where
the wings connect to the body. If you
are handling a raptor (like a hawk, owl, or falcon) then your primary goal is
to control the feet (rather than the head) because they have spectacular talons
to avoid. Although handling is pretty
fundamental it was actually quite scary for me.
I bet I had a funny look of concentration on my face most of the time
and I know my heart was racing more than once.
I always value these moments because it feels good to best something you
are kind of scared to do. I got to hold
a macaw and African Gray perched on my hand…which was AWESOME!! I bet my friend was laughing at me because he
does it every day, but man I was feeling myself in that moment.
I also practiced gavage (tube feeding), all the different
sites for euthanasia, taking blood from two sites, making blood smears, doing
Trichomonas testing, and probably a lot more.
Heck, they even let me do “wings and nails” on a few birds.
There were plenty of dogs and cats to see…and even some
rats, bunnies, monkeys (!), and guinea pigs.
I got to practice some of my skills and try new things like doing a
dental on a dog. From what I can tell,
most of the care and drugs are pretty much the same as what I have seen/been
taught in school. I have a lot of
knowledge gaps in small animal things.
In fact, I kind of suck at all of it.
I feel bad that my knowledge is crap, but I also do not want to work in
this area. Vet school is a constant
battle between “knowing all of the things” and trying to invest some extra
energy in the things that seem more relevant to your future. The ER vet on call in the hospital is not a
reproduction expert and the dermatologist is not up on her/his infectious
diseases of cattle. But, as a vet
student we apparently need to know it all.
As they say in SA…”eish.”
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| A native wild pigeon gets a superglue cast |
One unique thing about this practice, besides the fact that
they are one of the few bird practices around, is that they take any wild
animal that comes through the door with no questions asked. Well…maybe a few questions to get the
history. The clinic pays for treatment
and hospitalization, but people can make a donation. The majority of the animals that came in
were…you guessed it…birds! The majority
of the birds that came in were pigeons, but we also saw some beautiful raptors
and “garden birds.” Pigeons in this
country often carry a protozoa called Trichomonas
and although it’s treatable, it often recurs.
If a bird comes in with Trichomonas
it is euthanized because there is little that can be done to keep it from
becoming infected again and it can give this protozoa to other birds in the
clinic. To do the test you swab the
mouth and crop, prepare a wet mount slide, and have a look under the
microscope. I did not see any positives
while there, but it is a fairly common occurrence. Many of the birds had fractures and sadly
many of the birds had to be put to sleep.
In other words I got to practice performing many physical exams and
euthanasias. Wild birds must be fit to
stay wild, so if their medical problem (like a bad fracture) prevents a full
recovery then they get put to sleep.
Birds that can be fixed are treated, handed off to volunteers or rehab
centers, and then get released back into the wild. This is a great service to the community, not
only for the treatment these un-owned animals get, but also for the peace of
mind the person that brings the animal in receives. Win-win!
As far as clinic basics…most of the drugs were the same,
although the trade names were often different.
Synulox is Clavamox and so on and so forth. There are also different names for some
common things like a catheter is called a Jelco, presumably because that is the
brand name. It was interesting to see
the difference in labor here vs. at home.
There are veterinary nurses here (AKA vet techs), but this practice used
hired workers that would normally be cleaners and nannies in South Africa as
the people that did the animal care and handling. I’m sure that is much cheaper, but you get
what you pay for. There was a lot of
frustration from the vets about missed directions and slip-ups (like leaving
cage doors open) that probably could be avoided if nurses were employed. Having these workers also allows the vets to
be more authoritative over the employees which is a distinctly South African
phenomenon that I do not have time to explain here. I guess I’ll just leave it at saying it was
an interesting dynamic to observe.
I learned that an African Grey that falls to the ground can
often injure its beak or chest on impact because those birds are top
heavy. Cockatoos often injure their
butts because they are bottom heavy.
Either way…falling can be a painful experience. I think this would be an excellent way to
describe my first venture out into private practice since gaining admission to
the ivory tower known as vet school.
There were a lot of practices I observed that made me cringe. One doctor repeatedly performed surgery
without proper scrubbing, gowning, masking, or even wearing gloves. I could not believe it because of how much
this has been drilled into my head in school. (Remediate!) I didn’t even see any gloves out if I wanted
to use them, although further searching revealed some boxes in a cabinet
somewhere. Tables were rarely cleaned in
between patients and sometimes even the thermometers were not cleaned. There were many other basic hygiene things I
observed that I thought were kind of lacking.
The epidemiologist in me was crying in a corner somewhere. I realize that what I have been taught is the
“gold standard” of care in the most pampered environment possible, but there is
no substitute for basic hygiene. Overall
the care of the patients was decent, but I saw a lot of easy things that could
be improved. The practice is changing
hands soon, so it is likely that a new set of procedures will be implemented as
a younger set of vets run the show. Any
experience is one worth learning from whether it’s good or bad, so I can
definitely say that this proved to be a very valuable learning experience
overall, plus I got to see some amazing animals…like a crowned crane. I wouldn’t trade my two weeks for the world. I thank my friend for not only giving me the
opportunity to work with him, but also for being patient with me.
