Turtle Caesarian

Today We performed a caesarian section on a Yellow faced turtle. One of the eggs had ruptured inside her causing a nasty peritonitis. Her only chance is surgery. We removed six remaining eggs, which we have some hope will hatch. We also needed to remove a whole lot of damaged tissue, including her uterus so she will not breed again because it was too badly damaged. In this photo I am intubating her so we can do the surgery.

Bent Blue tounge

This Bluey (northern Blue tounge lizard) isn't really wildlife. It was actually pick up by some one who kept it as a pet. Unfortunately they didn't know what they were doing and kept it inside in an old fish tank and fed it mince meat. It seemed to do well for a while but became bendy and stopped moving much. So they surrendered it to us. Unwhittingly they had given it metabolic bone disease. This happened because the glass in the tank filters out the ultraviolet light which is neccessary for calcium metabolism and there was no calcium in its diet anyway. So the bones became rubbery and fragile. On xray it had lots of breaks and its bones were paper thin. With proper care and lots of calcium and uv light it should recover but it will probably always have bent back.

Baby Torri

This baby Torres Straight pigeon (also called Pied imperial pigeon or Torresian imperial pigeon - or affectionately a "Torri") fell out of its nest after a storm. Unfortunately like most pigeons, torris make pretty frail nests. What we reccomend when this happens is to put him back in the nest if possible or if the nest is destroyed to make a new nest for the parents out of an old ice cream container with holes in the bottom (to let the rain water out) tied to the tree with cable ties where the old nest was. the parents almost always come back and look after their baby. Their best chance is always in the wild with their own parents. Unfortunately for this one it's finders weren't willing to give it back to its parents so it will now need to be handraised. It is definately an ugly ducking at this age but with time it will grow into a spectacular adult.

Kookaburra

This unfortunate blue winged Kookaburra got caught on a barbwired fence. He was soaked in his own blood. While he has lots of feather damage and some blood loss he should be ok and there doesn't seem to be any permanent damage.

blind wallabies

Every so often one of our carers has a wallaby joey that goes blind. They develop cataracts and go blind quite suddenly. We don't fully understand what causes this but there are lots of theories. It in general seems to be those joeys that have had a very traumatic life. (ie the ones that were orphaned very young (pinkies), were injured (broken bones), dehydrated and gotten sick(diarrhoea etc)) It may well be something that we is not being met in terms of their nutrition or developmental needs as it seems to only occur in captivity but seems to happen very very sporadically. One theory is that joeys get too much oxygen by not being in their mothers pouch. So think it may be a virus and we have been looking for one but so far no success. It is a central blindness as well as cataracts so if you remove the cataracts they stay blind.
However they cope extremely well provided they are released into a predator free area (no dogs!) and with lots of other wallabies. They become very able at listening for the sounds of the other wallabies and very soon its hard to remember they are blind. They can breed and raise healthy seeing offspring.

Little Red Flying Fox

We had another little red flying fox caught up on a barb wire fence handed in over the weekend. This is her in the bag after being rescued but before being anaethetised so we could remove the wire. She looks very worried. However the wire was removed and the damage is repairable so she should be ok to be released in about a week.

Cockatoo

Unfortunately every few days we have a cockatoo handed in who is suffering from Psittacine beak and feather disease (PBFD) - It is caused by a small tough virus called a circovirus. It is uncurable and all affected birds die from it. They die from the imunosupression the virus causes but it also makes them loose feathers and eventually get beak deformities. It is very common and its likely that up to half of all wild cockatoos die from it. We cannot treat it, or help them so the best thing we can do for the affected birds is to euthanase them. Its only upside is that unlike almost every other disease & injury we treat in wildlife this is not caused by people - it is a natural & native virus.