Waking up to a text...

"Do you want to come and spay a quail and amputate a Harris' Hawks wing?"
...and of course, I did!

One of the vets in the Exotics clinic and a friend were doing a salpingectomy or hysterectomy on a quail; something they'd not done before so I just went down to help out monitoring anaesthesia and flicking through the surgery textbook.
Initially we started with a left ventral incision but found it hard to identify the ovaries so then we went midline, which gave much better visualisation and the procedure went smoothly. Ideally the textbook says it would be done endoscopically using surgical clips but I think it's better to walk before you can run!

The great thing about the Exotics clinic is that you don't know what's going to come in next so while we were there a Rosella (small parrot) came in with a leg ring which was far too tight and needed removing as it had caused the foot below the ring to swell up. He was more difficult to anaesthatise than the quail as they can bite so we caught him in a towel and gave Isoflo with a mask. The ring came off with a dremel and needed bandaging to reduce the haematoma and stop him biting at the wound. As he was under we also coped (filed down) his beak and nails.

Finally we amputated the Harris' Hawks wing. He was bred by a friend of ours and sold to a falconer for hunting but had an accident whilst out in the field and was electrocuted. The whole of the carpometacarpus and second digit were necrotic and had to be removed back to the bone and sutured up. He recovered quickly so will be fed up in the clinic and eventually come to us in Falconry Club as he can no longer be flown to hunt.