Physiology of Birds

We've just had a class on the Physiology of Birds, starting with a lecture on their anatomy and physiology followed by a practical.

First we took blood, either from the Brachial or Ulnar vein of the wing or the Medial Metatarsal vein which runs on the inner leg just above the hock.

They hold the birds differently over here than we do in the UK, by also restraining wings which I wasn't overly comfortable with but that's how we had to do it - Antonia and I put a tube down her esophagus and syringed a starch solution directly into the chickens crop:

After 20 minutes she was humanely euthanised by the vet technicians and we carried out a full dissection to look at the anatomy and physiology.

Samples were taken from each part of the digestive tract from the esophagus, grop, gizzard all the way through the small intestines to the cloaca; these were put into test tubes and incubated with a solution which changes colour depending on the presence of starch. The same was done with a solution which reacts with glucose so we were able to see exactly where starch is digested and were glucose is present in the digestive system.

I did the dissection and I found it really interesting as I've eviscerated lots of birds before and known what the major organs etc were but I'd not realised where the pancreas was before (in the duodenal loop) or seen the proventriculus just above the gizzard; I also learnt the yellow lining of the gizzard has a name, the koilin.