#scriptvet

[scriptveterinarian]

Hello! I was wondering if a chicken could be a travelling companion for an adventurer. Could it lay eggs? If yes, how often?

Assuming you have a human-sized adventurer, I see no reason why they couldn’t have a chicken traveling with them. They may have to keep the chicken in a cage, and I’m not certain how combat effective she’s likely to be, but it could be done.

Most domestic chickens lay eggs even in the absence of a rooster. Commercial layer hens may lay 300+ eggs a year, typically one a day. Heritage breeds, particularly meat breeds, may be as low as 60-80 eggs a year. They typically lay one egg a day through the period of the year with the longer day lengths, i.e. spring and summer. When chickens go through a molt, they stop laying.

However, this means that if your adventurer is traveling underground where there isn’t any daylight, the chicken may stop laying.

- Dr Ferox

[ask-a-vetblr]

If you were presented with an alien life form how would you go about beginning treatment. Like if Lilo brought Stitch in for an appointment What would you do?

Sueanoi here.

I’d refer to exotic vet. eeeyyyyy.

...I’ll let our exotic vet give you actual answer.

Dr Ferox here. I wrote a series on this when I did ScriptVet.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

vet-and-wild here.

Just thought I’d chime in as an exotics vet. We have species come in that we’ve never seen before, or don’t see often. Fortunately, once you get good at doing a physical exam, you can do it on pretty much any species. Now if an alien came in with anatomy that was completely different from anything on Earth, that would be much more of a challenge.

[scriptveterinarian]

How bad are paralysis ticks? The Australian kind? For my Nano, I have this scene of where a family's house is infested with ticks and the father nearly dies. Can they kill or at least bed-rid a man? Or I'm overblowing things?

Ixodes holocyclus is the most common species of paralysis tick in Australia, essentially limited in its distribution to the Eastern seaboard. Humans are not really my thing, but most human cases reported have been children because their smaller size makes them more vulnerable, and they may be less able to express that they’ve been bitten.

They tend not to infest houses so much as grassy areas that have a lot of native mammals pass through, so if the house is in bushland the garden may be host to these ticks.

Tick paralysis needs requires hospitalization if it occurs, but an adult human would likely require multiple ticks attached for a prolonged period to cause paralysis. However, these ticks can also cause anaphylaxis which will potentially kill your adult human. Check out Aunt Scripty’s write up on anaphylaxis for more information.

Australian ticks can also cause mammalian meat allergy, where the bitten human may develop lift threatening allergies to consuming mammalian meat. That’s a nasty little complication that not a lot of people know about.

- Dr Ferox.

For more information see: Reference 1, Reference 2, and more about mammalian meat allergy.

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[scriptveterinarian]

Hi! One of my character's cats (adult but age otherwise unspecified, neutered male) is going to get hit by a car. As a result he has to have a hind leg amputated - how long would he stay at the vets, what would his recovery from this look like and how long would it take? Also, what other injuries would he be likely to sustain? Thanks!

Leg amputation in a cat looks like a brutal surgery, but the recovery period is not all that long. The cat may be discharged to its owner’s care that evening, or the next day. I’d then expect it to spend two weeks or so recovering, during which time it needs to be strictly confined.

However, if a cat was hit by a car then it may have other injuries that necessitate it staying in hospital for longer, either before or after the leg amputation. If the cat has sustained chest or abdominal trauma, care of those injuries will be prioritized before the leg amputation, as you want the cat to survive the anesthesia.

Low speed impacts, such as running over the cat in the driveway while parking the car, can have bruising and crushing injuries but do less damage than high speed impacts. High speed impacts may also result in the following:

Diaphragm rupture, which will require major surgery to repair and will likely result in having a chest drain and multiple days of intensive care

Bladder rupture, which can result if the cat is struck while its bladder is full. This may not be diagnosed for a day or so but will then require abdominal surgery to repair.

Gut ruptures, splenic ruptures and liver lacerations are relatively rare, but would also require abdominal surgery.

The cat is also likely to have superficial abrasions, they also commonly shred their nails when being hit by a car. They may have fractured teeth also.

Cat generally heal very well if you can put all the pieces close enough together. It’s also worth knowing that cats with hind limb amputations will still attempt to scratch their ear with the absent hind leg, though this seems to be the only thing that really holds them back. They are generally very mobile and active compared to pre-amputation, but may be more at risk of arthritis.

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[scriptveterinarian]

Hi! Question: are there on call vets like there are with doctors? If so, how does that work (i.e. how long are they on call and stuff)? Thanks!

Yes, veterinarians provide out of hours services, though how those services are structured will depend on the type of service the veterinarian usually provides, and where they’re located.

For example in small animal medicine, you may have a dedicated 24 hour clinic that the general practice clinics refer to. This clinic may be open overnight, weekends and public holidays only (that is to say, the reverse of the normal clinics), or they might be truly 24 hours. This situation is where you’re likely to find your emergency specialists and the fancy toys, including CT scanners and automatic ventilators.

For some reasons (usually political) or in places too sparsely populated to maintain a 24 hour clinic, the GP vets generally provide an after hours service. Clinics will vary, but either the phones are diverted to their mobile, or a message on the answering machine and door will tell you who to call when the clinic is closed. If there are multiple clinics in the same location, they may ‘share’ the after hours load in order to give themselves more breaks in between.

Large animal clinics, and mixed practices, often work this way. This is especially true where the value of the individual patient isn’t all that high (eg cattle).

Equine medicine may work this way with mobile vets, or they may have staff on duty in a fixed location hospital. Sometimes they’re just called in as needed. Partly this depends on how busy they expect to be.

Specialists of most disciplines often have an on-call roster, where they take turns being on call. In this situation the calls are fielded by the other after-hours staff, only calling in the specialist where required. For example, if I’m working overnight and I get a minor surgery that I can manage, I treat it myself. If it has a broken leg, it’s triaged and managed until morning when the surgeon gets in, and then handed across. If a patient presents with complete paralysis and loss of deep pain sensation in its hind legs, then surgeon-boy (they are not all boys, but the one who always seems to be rostered on when I am is) gets called in. 

Some specialists do not have a roster, but the emergency clinics have a means to contact them. There is very rarely a dermatology emergency, for example. Some consultants or individual vets may also choose to hand out their  personal mobile numbers for special cases.

As to how long a vet should be on call, well, what ‘should’ be and what ‘actually is’ is often very different, and laws will vary by country.

A typical ‘on-call’ period is 24 hours, but a veterinarian can be expected to do multiple on-call periods in a row (eg Friday, Saturday, Sunday). A vet working on their own in practice might be on call every single night for their entire working lives.

This, typically, drives one a bit crazy.

The sheer unpredictability and broken sleep of on call work isn’t great for your mental health. It’s not as though you get the next day off to sleep if you get called in, unless you’re working in a dedicated 24 hour center. (Dedicated 24 hour clinics have made my life so much better, you just do not understand unless you’ve lived it.)

Nine continuous days and nights on call is the most I’ve had to do, and let me assure you I was loopy by the end of it. That’s not normal or good, a more typical situation isn’t more than 1 in 3, but it does happen.

[scriptveterinarian]

I have a dog character and some wolf characters, and I've heard that there's a bit of a "language barrier" between the two species. And I was wondering how I would portray that? It's in first person.

This will depend on which species your Point Of View is coming from. 

Wolves and dogs are of course very similar, similar enough to crossbreed, but they are also distinctly different species. Compared to wolves, dogs generally are:

More juvenile in their appearance and behaviour, (neoteny)

Less independent of humans (frequently defaulting to ‘ask the human’ in their problem solving)

Less lateral thinking in problem solving

Sound more like wolf puppies

Potentially very different physical appearance

So if you anthropomorphise this for storytelling, a wolf meeting a dog might encounter a creature that looks similar enough to it, but sounds and thinks like a child when it looks like it should be an adult, and has no understanding of etiquette, and misunderstands social queues. And despite acting, sounding and thinking like a child, the dog engages in what should be strictly adult activities like reproduction.

Or it might look like something completely non-recognisable as a wolf (think what a wolf must think a shih tzu is), but still sounds like a child. 

Personally that starts to feel like some kind of uncanny valley child demon horror story.

From the dog’s point of view, it might be like a child looking on an adult, a being with more abilities and knowledge than they had considered before, but who has rules that they just didn’t know were there.

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[scriptveterinarian]

Speaking of interestingly colored kitties, why are almost all ginger cats male? Are ginger females extremely rare? Are they able to produce viable offspring or are they barren?

Ginger female cats are not rare and they are perfectly normal cats.

Going back to our possible crosses for the black and ginger genes, for these possible parent combinations we have the following expected offspring:

And if you cross a ginger queen with a ginger tom, you will get all ginger kittens, both male and female. So from the potential crosses which produce ginger kittens we see:

A: 0 ginger kittens

B: 1/2 ginger male kittens

C: 1/4 ginger female kittens, 1/4 ginger male kittens

D: 1/4 ginger male kittens

Pure cross: 1/2 ginger female kittens, 1/2 ginger male kittens.

If black and ginger genes are equally as common in a population, and these cats are mating randomly, the kitten population will have twice as many ginger male kittens than ginger female kittens.

So ginger queens are less common, but they’re far from rare. You can’t say “almost all ginger cats are male” like you can say “almost all tortoiseshell cats are female) because one exists in a ratio of 1:2 and the other 1:1,000.

[scriptveterinarian]

Two question, in regards to werewolves. 1. In my headcanon, werewolves in wereform sweat like horses, what would this look like or smell like? Is sweating something horses in full winter coat do? 2. How much would a kinked/damaged tail affect a canine's balance on all fours? What about standing on two legs?

If you mean sweating over most of the body in a relatively long coat, it depends on how active your werewolf is. If they’re not too active:

If they are very active (or if wearing something that rubs) the sweat may begin to foam. This looks quite dramatic.

Horses can exert themselves to the point of sweating in a full winter coat. Every mammal can, which is why part of survival advice in cold weather is to not push yourself too hard.

Sweat smells like sweat. ScriptEquestrian might be able to help you more with that particular detail, though.

As for a kinked tail, it’s probably not going to affect balance on all four legs, a quadrupedal stance is pretty stable, though as the tail acts somewhat as a counterbalance it might reduce some dexterity when turning at speed. This is likely to be less of an issue than it would have been for a feline species.

On two legs, it will depend on how upright your werewolves are. The more upright they stand, the less of an issue it will be. If the tail is kinked to the side, then the individual may learn to hold the tail more to the other side

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[scriptveterinarian]

I was wondering if you could help me writing a dog who's been through a very tramatic event. See the story goes that some guys are trying to beat it to death but a young man steps in and saves the dog. Even goes the extra mile to adopt it after it gets out of the clinic. And I'm wondering what kind of behavior (and bond with the young man) that dog would have?

Unfortunately the dog is not guaranteed to recognize the hero as the person who ‘saved’ it. Once a dog is at an extremely high level of fear, or panic, just about everything that happens will be perceived as ‘bad’. Consider the events from the dog’s point of view:

Extremely bad thing is happening (being beaten towards death)

It’s still scary being rescued from that situation, especially if there’s much yelling

Car ride to vet clinic, and car rides are scary at the best of times

Is then in the vet clinic in a state of anxiety, which is scary at the best of times, and still in pain if it was beaten badly enough.

So all of these events are potentially perceived as Very Bad and so is everything associated with them. Dogs also interpret some cause and effect differently than us, so if they are in pain when encountering something new the may ‘blame’ the new thing for being associated with the pain, including meeting new people.

What I’m trying to get at is that dog’s don’t understand complex motives of people all that well, and the beaten dog may well associate the hero with the abuse it went through. Just because he was there and part of the events.

It would be very unlikely for the dog to be happy to see the hero, it’s unlikely to understand exactly what’s happened. Every dog is different, but I would expect it to be neutral at best, and there hero would have a lot of work ahead of them to ‘win the dog over’ as it were.

The dog may also have persistent anxiety and exaggerated fear responses to anything remotely associated with the beating: location, color clothes, raised voices, certain movements, certain sounds or smells etc. It may also be not obvious what it concerning the dog.

But if the hero does manage to convince the dog that he is a safe person, then they are likely to become the sort of dog that only trusts one person, and may be very uncomfortable when outside of their comfort zone or when left alone.

Dogs vary in their personalities and you can have a broad variety of behavior, but the dog may not recognize its ‘rescuer’ as being a separate type of person to the abusers.

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[scriptveterinarian]

Is it possible to tell how many puppies a dog has in her current litter? Like, if you found a mother and you found, like, 3 puppies is it possible to tell if she has 2 more puppies somewhere or if she only has 3 pups total?

Unfortunately, there’s not a reliable way.

Individual dogs will vary in how much mammary gland development they have per litter, ad while you would expect more milk on a dog with more pups, that’s not always the case and you don’t know what ‘more’ or ‘less’ is for an individual dog.

The dog may not give you any behavioral clues either. She may be very interested in wherever she left her pups, but they usually don’t count like humans so and may simply not notice if one is missing.

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[scriptveterinarian]

If a coyote attacked a dog specifically a bite on the neck and stomach will it lead to permanent scarring? How would the vet treat it? And if the dog were pregnant can it kill the puppies?

Any wound that causes full thickness damage to the skin is capable of causing scarring. Whether that scar is noticeable or not will depend on its size, and the fur length on the rest of the dog.

A bite from another canid (like a coyote or another dog) would be shaved to assess the external extent of the damage. The patient would most likely be anesthetized for anything other than the most minor of injuries. Once the wounds are shaved and cleaned, which may include flushing with sterile saline to remove as much debris (including hair and dirt) as possible, a surgical assessment would be made.

If trauma extends into the abdomen, then everything is much more complicated as you have numerous organs to consider, as well as the risk of peritonitis. The muscle wall must be closed, and an indwelling drain might be placed. Then subcutaneous tissues must be closed, joining up layers as close as possible to their original anatomy. The skin is closed in a separate layer, and may have visible external sutures, especially if there has been a lot of damage.

Significant tearing injuries, typical for most dog bites, will often require a subcutaneous drain to prevent seroma formation. Basically when two tissue layers have been torn apart, the resulting space will fill with fluid over time, delaying healing, presenting an infection risk and causing pain. Subcutaneous drains, like the common penrose, are placed to prevent this. Depending on how extensive the damage is, multiple drains might be placed.

There is a particular dog attack situation referred to by vets as BDLD, which stands for “Big Dog vs Little Dog” because these types of dog attacks have a whole set of extra problems. Two dogs of similar size fighting is bad enough, but when a big German Shepherd picks up an unlucky Shih Tzu and shakes it like a rag doll, then you also have to consider such potential complications as kidney avulsion, brain damage and eyes popping out of head. I don’t know how big the dog in your story is, but this sort of attack can definitely kill fetuses in a pregnant dog.

As a side note, I really hope your dog character is vaccinated for rabies. If she is, then she will be re-vaccinated at the clinic and this may have effects on the growing fetuses. If she’s not, then recommended treatment is actually euthanasia in many places, after any bite from potentially infected wildlife. Otherwise there’s a 6 month quarantine, and that’s not great for the pups social development or the dog.

If the dog has had significant trauma to any structure inside the abdomen, it might be enough to kill the developing fetuses. If she’s more than half way through her pregnancy then she may not abort the deceased ones, but they may be ‘born’ as small, shriveled, ‘mummified’ puppies. If the damage occurs early in her pregnancy, she may simply reabsorb them.

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[scriptveterinarian]

A series that I read talked about cats having scent sacs and that they can draw air in through their mouth in a kind of "skree" sound over the roof of their mouth and scent sacs to get a better sense of what smells they are encountering. I have a cat character in one of my books and I need to describe them scenting something. Would this be an accurate way to describe it? Or what would be better?

If you talk about ‘scent sacs’ to many people, they are going to assume you’re writing about anal glands, which are definitely not what you’re referring to.

I think the behavior that series is trying to describe is the Flehmen Response, which many mammals, including cats, perform when investigating particularly interesting scents. Mostly this is used when investigating urine or other pheromone rich signals.

Domestic cats typically look like the following:

Open mouth

Sometimes tongue protrudes a little

Upper lips moderately lifted

Sometimes short, sharp breaths

Sometimes lick the smelly thing of interest

The most common example of when this occurs is when a tomcat is investigating scents from a queen on heat.

Cats (and other mammals) do this to encourage pheromones to contact their vomeronasal organ, which I unfortunately can’t find a good diagram for you. All the pictures I can find of it are from cat dissections, which I understand many readers may not want to look at.

It basically looks like a little swelling on the roof of the mouth, behind the front teeth. It’s easy to overlook.

So you could describe it many ways, but it’s basically open mouth breathing with curled upper lips over the scent of interest.

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[scriptveterinarian]

Hi ScriptVet! In a fantasy, pre-industrial setting could a short haired dog native to a warm climate such as a saluki or Rhodesian ridgeback live in an area with winter temperatures between the 20-40 degrees Fahrenheit? What would need to be done to assist them? (Dog jackets, sleeping by a fire, etc.) It may be worth noting that these dogs would be used to hunt, highly prized as symbols of a god, and they can live almost twice as long as a regular dog. Thanks in advance for your help!

Converting Fahrenheit to something sensible like Celsius, that temperature range is only a few degrees either side of freezing. Warm climate dogs could survive, but it’s not going to be easy and they will definitely benefit from assistance. In particular, the points to consider for these dogs are:

Shelter

External heat

Clothing

High calorie diet

Cold is tough enough to deal with, but cold and wind or wet is much, much worse. Giving these dogs a place to go to avoid the weather will be hugely advantageous to their survival.

Eternal heat, like fires, warm floors, etc will also help them maintain their body temperature, though this wont really be much help when out hunting in the cold and (I assume) snow.

A high calorie diet will help prevent hypothermia, and if these dogs are highly prized I would expect they are well fed. Some extra subcutaneous fat wouldn’t go astray for them either over winter.

Clothing for the dogs should definitely be considered, not just jackets but also some sort of boot to protect their toes from both hard snow and frostbite. Toe injuries are very common in racing and hunting dogs, especially over uneven ground or with rapid turning. Dog snow boots can be bought commercially, and I’d recommend looking at some to determine how a similar thing could be constructed in your setting.

When exercising, the muscle movements of the dog would be expected to help keep it warm and its core body temperature high, providing it is well enough vet and not pushed to exhaustion. However dogs with thin fur and low levels of body fat, or thin skin (such as the greyhound and other sighthounds) can still be vulnerable to frostbite on their extremities. This is particularly true for ears, tail tips and toes. Short periods of time out in the cold will be fine, but prolonged exposure may cause issues. While tail docking and ear cropping is an unnecessary and considered both unethical and illegal in many countries today, it is a historical practice which might be considered in your setting. You may also consider some type of hooded jacket to cover the ears, though it’s very difficult to keep any covering on the tail of a happy dog.

Remember: anything can survive winter if its warm and cosy indoors.

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[scriptveterinarian]

Hey, so I've been toying around with the idea of a cervitaur (a deer centaur, which you probably knew) and want to give them a deer's senses. Could you maybe tell me what advantages and disadvantages there would be? Thank you! Your blog is a great help!

The entire physiology of deer, and many other prey species, is geared towards being in a constant state of flight or fight, with overlying signals saying wait…

… don’t panic.

Deer have evolved a system where if they are in any doubt, they panic and run away. This works for them because running a short distance if there was no threat is less costly for them than if they don’t run and there is a threat. Fawns that rely on camouflage are the exception, which may freeze when frightened.

Hearing, sight and smell are strong senses in deer. Their function is directly linked with their anatomy, so if you’re making a cervitaur, whether or not these senses apply will depend on the anatomical structure of the head.

Deer can hear higher frequency sound than we can, and the shape of their ears are better for pinpointing the direction of a sound. Their ability to move their ears allows them to do this without moving their head, and if your cervitaur also has this ability then they need enough muscle on their head to allow this. Humans have relatively little muscle on our heads, and we can barely move our ears at all.

Their vision better suited to low light vision than us, but less able to perceive colour. Colour vision is simply not as important for a grazing herbivore as spotting movement in the dark, but if your cervitaur have a different diet where colour vision is advantageous (eg a more human diet, or a high fruit diet) then this may be different. They have a wide field of vision because their eyes are on either side of their head, not forward facing. They have a relatively narrow field of binocular vision with good depth perception compared to humans. A wide, horizontal pupil helps them have this broad visual field.

(Image source)

A deer can potentially detect a scent from 500m or more away, in favorable conditions, though this is likely just as a vague direction and not as precise as their hearing. This is directly related to the anatomy of the deer’s muzzle, with a large nasal cavity for detecting scent molecules.

If your cervitaur has non-mobile ears, forward facing eyes and a flat face, it probably does not have all the senses of a deer.

The advantages of a deer’s senses are that it’s difficult to sneak up on, but the disadvantages are a lack of colour differentiation, relatively narrow depth perception, and being very prone to panic. Deer often congregate in herds because they trust each other to also be on the lookout for danger, and experience much higher stress when kept on their own.

[scriptveterinarian]

Okay. Tortoiseshell tomcats. I've seen several tortie toms in a favorite book series of mine (warriors by erin hunter). Now, i know that tortie toms are rare enough, but one of the toms in said book series was able to father kits, which, as far as I can tell, is TECHNICALLY possible, though obviously very improbable for genetic reasons. I was wondering if it's possible for a tom to have a fur pattern that mimics a tortie but produce viable offspring. Thoughts?

The genes for ginger or black occur on the X chromosome, though other modifiers can occur in other genes (eg tabby, point, white patches etc). A tortiseshell cat needs to have both the black and the ginger gene, which means two different X chromosomes.

Now, the easiest way for a cat to have two X chromosomes, and by far the most common, is to simply be an ordinary female. So the tortoiseshell cat ends up with two X chromosomes, one with ginger and the other with black, and ends up with a random mosaic of the two colours.

(Image source)

To have a male tortoiseshell cat, the individual needs two X chromosomes, and a Y chromosome. The most common arrangement where this occurs is XXY, or Klinefelter’s Syndrome. Somewhere between 1 in 200 and 1 in 1000 tortoiseshell cats will have this genetic arrangement, and they present as sterile males.

The other way you can get a male tortoiseshell, is to have a chimera. A cat with XX/XY or XY/XY genotype could potentially have two different sorts of X chromosomes, and it’s theoretically possible for an XY/XY chimera to be fertile, and carry both ginger and black.

the odds of having an XY/XY chimera male tortoiseshell cat are optimistically 1 in 4000, and pessimistically 1 in 35,000.

The other possibility, in the case of your book, is infidelity.

[scriptveterinarian]

More an RPG question, but: Do you think a halfling (36" high; 35 lbs) could ride a spotted hyena (28-36" high at shoulder; 150 lbs, per Wikipedia)? I'm assuming she could train it via magic, but I'm not sure its size and physical structure are suitable...

(I’m assuming a lot of D&D 3.5 edition rules because those are the one’s I’m most familiar with)

A halfling could certainly get a saddle made to sit on a hyena, but a standard hyena is probably approaching its carrying capacity and the limit of its strength to carry a halfling around for any length of time, and that’s not accounting for gear and armor.

You could potentially modify the hyena, adding a couple of hit dice to increase it’s strength score (and possibly height) so that it can carry more for longer. It’s only a small tweak that would be needed in the rules. Domesticated hyenas bred for increased carrying capacity is an interesting possibility.

Dungeons & Dragons often pairs halflings with riding dog’s, so I don’t see why you couldn’t modify those rules a little to suit your idea. It is fantasy after all. 

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