claws-and-effectarchive - Tumblr blog

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Skeleton Horses

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My friend while using a doppler probe to listen to a bearded dragon's heartbeat :

"I forgot reptiles had hearts and all that."

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I’M-

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Can a chicken’s gut feelings cause her to peck her flock mates?

I did my undergraduate thesis on poultry behaviour and welfare, and my research was part of a bigger project looking into feather-pecking, a serious behavioural disorder in captive chickens. It was recently published - you can give it a read here, or check out a quick summary under the cut below!

Keep reading

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What I Learned in Medical School #46: Radiologists are like the art critics/museum docents of medicine. I don’t know what it is that they see, but I sure am glad to have their interpretation.

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Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada

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So I haven’t made any kind of update in months because after the first two weeks of school, we went into lockdown. With school moving online, I felt pretty discouraged to make any posts, I was just trying to keep my head above water and get through the course.

Restrictions began to loosen and I was feeling more energized. I figured I’d start posting again in semester 2 when we were supposed to have a handful of in person practicals. The weekend before semester 2 started, we went back into lockdown and I am not feeling very optimistic about what that means for us. It is strange to think that I may do an entire year of vet school without having done a real dissection or touched an animal.

I want to try to get back into posting again despite the situation so... This is me breaking the ice again. I hope everyone is getting through okay :)

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When the techs are asking for your plan during a patient emergency:

But shit you have no idea either

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To elaborate:

My prof was talking about how 30 years ago ostrich farming became really big in Australia and then by the time my prof graduated there were few farms left.

He said ostriches were changing hands at 50,000 dollars which got people excited. People wanted ostriches to breed so that they could buy into the industry. The value of the animal became selling the breeding pairs to other people, instead of the final animal products.

The name of an investment scheme where the early people make the money by selling to people who want to get in on the business is A PYRAMID SCHEME! Obviously this was not intentional, but that's pretty much what was going on.

So, the ostriches went really well at the beginning of the trend, until everyone had ostriches and they realised that there wasn't a big enough market for the actual ostrich products. Then pretty much all the farms disappeared.

One of the most exciting tid bits I’ve learned in vet school so far is that ostrich farming is a pyramid scheme

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One of the most exciting tid bits I’ve learned in vet school so far is that ostrich farming is a pyramid scheme

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Just had my first exam that wasn’t all multiple choice, and I was left speechless after... let me just say... I have been truly humbled... 

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Forcing a decision

@theflashisgone said to @ask-drferox: What do you do when a patient is dying horribly in front of you (in this case, of idiopathic DIC) and the owners just don’t get that they need to make the decision of wether to euthanize? Like, they can’t go home and think about it, because the decision will be taken out of their hands by the time they get home and it will be even more traumatic than it already was.

Oh, I hate these scenarios, but they’re no time to be subtle.

I start out gently and assume the owners are reasonable people with at least average intelligence, just in a bit of shock about the whole situation. So the technique is more about guiding them down a path to understanding rather than hitting them over the head with a harsh decision.

I apologize for needing to force them to make a decision, right now. eg “I’m sorry to have to do this to you, but this will go very bad very quickly and you only have two options. Treat intensively or euthanasia. And I’m sorry but you have to decide now.”

I offer a brief explanation of what’s going on, and why/how this animal is trying to die, and most importantly what it will feel like. The understanding that the animal will suffer if they do nothing will push most people into choosing one way or another. eg “He is bleeding out into his abdomen, rapidly, and will exsanguinate without surgery and a blood transfusion. He will bleed out, not be able to get enough oxygen, and die. It would be animal cruelty for me to let you take him home like this.”

It’s important to get the prognosis in there too, so pet owners can make a fair decision. “He might die anyway, even with treatment. Odds of survival are approximately X” or what diagnostics you would need to do to offer a prognosis.

Repeat their choices, and apologize for forcing them to choose again.

Answer their questions. Try to figure out what they need.

If they still can’t choose in a timely manner, apologize again for the interruption, but ask if they want you to resuscitate or not because their pet could die at any time. And that is usually the last kick they need to go ‘oh, this is serious, and urgent’.

The frequent apologies are there to soften the blow. Usually I’d give them more options, but I just can’t in these situations, so I acknowledge that it sucks, but it’s going to suck more if I don’t force you into a decision.

My absolute last resort is to just euthanise the animal before it suffers. I’ll have to explain myself to the Vet Board if I do, but if I’m quite confident that it was necessary, I’m prepared to make that call. I’ve never actually had to do it for an owned animal, the above techniques usually get us there fast enough.

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Say it loud for the people in the back:

AZA ACCREDITIED ZOOS ONLY

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The main prof for my animal production systems course loves to go on tangents, and I can tell it’s gonna be a particularly long ramble whenever he starts pulling up a virtual tour of a farm in Australia