Monday, February 23, 2009

American Crow Update

This American Crow originally presented with a fractured left metacarpal. The fracture had unfortunately broken through his skin, resulting in what we call an open fracture. His wing was wrapped and he was started on pain medication and antibiotics. He progressed well for a few weeks, but then injured his wing while he was trying to pick through his bandage. Self-injury is a common complication in the WMC, since the stay in the ward can be stressful for wild animals. Some animals cannot survive the stress of being indoors and handled by human beings, while others continually try to pick at themselves or their wounds. This Crow is still improving, with the team now incorporating some physical therapy into his treatments to try to ensure he retains movement in his wing. In these photos, members of Team 10 are changing the bandage that covers the Crow's wound and re-wrapping his wing to continue to stabilize his fracture.

Neil Wound Cleaning (2) 2/11/09

Neil Wound Cleaning 2/11/09

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Too bad the crow has been a little stressed. We try our hardest at the WMC to make sure that the animals are not exposed to undue stressors. Some of the ways we do this are to reduce noise levels in the clinic and to only handle cases when necessary.

Val said...

Yeah, he has a lot of toys in his cage and we put him in the back of the room to try to keep him away from the noise. He's actually pretty calm while being handled and an easy patient to work with. I'm fairly sure that he hurt himself trying to get his wing wrap off... Crows are just too smart for their own good.