Physiological and behavioral considerations:

Despite their normal peer preference, when they tend to form groups of 4-5 individuals, once a disturbance in their daily habit takes place, the horses stick together, are extremely cautious of the surroundings and gallop as a heard.

In comparison with the domesticated horses, in these horses we noticed a tendency for masking the underlying diseases and a higher capacity to cope with pain.

Field chemical immobilization/anesthesia consideration:

Excluding any type of direct drug administration due to their avoidance of human natural contact, we had to consider other remote drug delivery systems.  Taking into account the fact that the CO2 dart gun or pistol presents a higher trauma index, and that these horses are now feeling more or less comfortable with people in a 5-10 m range distance, we have decided that the blowpipe drug delivery ) would be the best option for this particular situation. An overall assumption on the stallions weight would be around 300kg (+/-50kg) per animal.

As a technical fact we had to consider that the best ballistics for a 11mm blowpipe is the 3ml thin dart syringe. We managed to build those dart syringes from 3ml lure lock normal syringes.

The second important technical fact is that we had to choose the combination of drugs that would offer the highest concentration per ml and would anesthetize a horse in the shortest period of time possible with minimum side effects thus diminishing the stress.

The third fact is the availability of secure drugs with high concentration on Romania’s market. The literature (Walzer, Zoo Animal & Wildlife Immobilization and Anesthesia, 2007) suggests for the chemical immobilization of non-domesticated equids (Przewalski’s horse, wild ass, zebra) ethorphine in different combinations of tiletamine/zolazepam, acepromazine, detomidine or buthorphanol. Unfortunately ethorphine (Immobilon) is not available in Romania, consequently we had to address the situation resuming to the drugs marketed, in this case: tiletamine/zolazepam (Zoletil 50), detomidine (Domosedan), buthorphanol (Butomidor) ketamine (Vetased), acepromazine (Calmivet) and xylasine (Narcoxyl 2).

The highest concentration per ml is Domosedan, followed by  Butomidor and then Zoletil, they all have smooth and fast induction effect, a safe toxicity level, they do not show any incompatibility between themselves and they all work on different receptors. Because of these reasons we have decided to use them according to the following protocol:

Zoletil is presented as a whitish powder and its solvent. We have removed the solvent and added one whole vile of 5ml of Domosedan and another 2 ml of Butomidor. The resulted mixture would be 7ml of 125mg tiletamine/125mg zolazepam (TZ), 50 mg detomidine and 20 mg buthorphanol. The drugs’ prospects recommend as followed: 3-8mg/kg TZ, 40-80 detomidine ug/kg and 10 mg butorphanol.

Theoretically the whole mixture should easily cover the sedation of two adult 300 kg horses, but only if given intravenous which in our particular case is impossible. The pharmacokinetics of the same drug given intravenous (i.v.) or intramuscular (i.m.) is different. Intra-muscular injections take longer for the effect to install (around 15 min ) in comparison with the i.v. ones (max 30 sec), and very important, it requires higher amount of drugs for i.m. injections to have  similar effect with the i.v. administration.

Immobilization

The dart syringes  (3ml maximum capacity) were filled each one with the above-mentioned mixture and delivered with the blowpipe whenever the animal was relaxed and close enough for a good aim in the hind legs.

In one case the delivery of only one dart was enough for the animal to lay down in recumbency in less than 10 minutes. For others (2 horses) it took up to four (4) fully discharged darts for the effect to take place and the horse to lay down on the ground (in those particular cases the full effect took place in 30-40 min). The average for all the horses would be 2-3 fully discharged 3ml dart syringes and a time of 15-20 minutes for the animal to be chemically immobilized on the ground and ready for the sterilization procedure.

Factors that can influence the immobilization procedure

Using a remote drug delivery system such as the blowpipe and the tranquilization darts raises some technical difficulties that can affect the overall process.

Aiming correctly at an animal is always a tricky procedure. Ideally the horse has to be close enough (around 5 m in range), not moving and relaxed. Many times the animals move or run away from humans right when the blowpipe is being raised. If the dart is blown while the animal is moving, the dart can bounce or deflect. There is also the possibility to miss the target.

Another problem can arise with the dart itself. During the handling it can loose pressure, the pistons can get stuck, it can get blocked in the blowpipe, etc. All these factors are hard to limit and have to be considered a souse of overall loss (drugs, darts).

To estimate this loss we have concluded that for one horse we use maximum 5 darts, with 25% chances for the dart not to hit the target or not to fully discharge.

Weather, tiredness, exterior pressure, low quality equipment can have a direct effect on this rate of loss.

Sterilization

Once the animal lays down due to the tranquilization, someone grabs the head of the animal and puts one’s weight on the neck and over the maxilla. A blanket will cover the head to protect and minimize any other stimuli.

If the animal had not been sedated enough, an intravenous injection of 5-10 ml of ketamine 10% has been administrated.

A rope tied to the pastern of the above hind leg was pulled anteriorly to give space for the procedure. A local disinfection with alcohol and betadine was performed and an intra testicular injection with 10 ml procaine 2% (local anesthetic) was injected in each testicle.

Two incisions were made over both testicles, parallel with the median line of the scrotum. Once the testis were separated from their covers, Raimer’s forceps were placed on each spermatic cord.  The forceps were kept on place for 30 minutes to ensure a proper vasotripsy, then the testicles were removed. During this time the animal received antibiotic (1ml/25kg -penicillin/streptomicine –PenStrep), an analgesic/anti-inflammatory agent (20 ml metamizole-Novasul)  and an anti-tetanus serum (1500 UAI).  A local fast scarring agent (Germostop/Terramycin) and an insect repellent were pulverized on and around the incisions.

After the operation the horse was kept another 15-20 minutes with his head on the ground and then the blanket was removed. In most of the cases the horses got up immediately after the blanket was taken off or waited another couple of minutes.

The whole intervention, from the time the horse laid down until he raised on his feet took around 1 hour.

Post op considerations

In all male horse sterilization there is a normal swelling of the incision area that follows the intervention and lasts a few days. Because of the impossibility to asses the operation area without another tranquilization the horses were kept under close observation. We made the horses canter regularly in the paddock for the inflammation to decrease.

After 5-7 days the swelling disappeared and the horses appear to be in a good clinical shape.

Conclusions:

Field castration of wild horses implies knowledge on the behavior of animals and special logistics and know-how of the chemical immobilization methods. This knowledge reduced as much as possible the stress produced by the intervention.  Because it cannot be compared with a normal domesticated horse anesthesia, where the drugs are injected directly intravenously, wild horse anesthesia is trickier, takes longer, is more expensive and presents some risks. After the operation the healing process takes up to one week without any other intervention.

by Ovidiu Rosu

history:
almost 2 months ago we’ve made the dental extraction of the right and left upper P4 premolars (they were rotten insde), and put him on oral Amoxi/Clav ac. and metacam. The folowing days we saw that there was a little amount of pus from the right upper premolar hole, flush it for a little while and after some other couple of days everything seemed cleaned so we’ve send him to his rehab place.
It passed one week and we saw a fairly big amount of puss coming down from the extraction hole of the right premolar. This time we’ve started giving Baytril for 5 days, but still no improvement so we’ve changed it to Synulox (8 days), and this time we did not see animore the pus (so back to his place agian).
After another 10 days the condition releapsed, and in a few days the whole right cheek, form the right nostril up to the ear was just a big bag of pus, but the tooth entrance was closed his time. We’ve made two half a centimeter cuts on the cheek(one underneath the other), took all the pus out (incredible amount for the loris size; the pus wasn’t under the skin but somewhere under the maseter muscles, close to the bones), flush it and put a improvised IV-drip drain. We’ve then flush it for a couple of days with a mixture of penicilline and saline, and it seemed to go well. Took the drain out after 3 days and clean it trough the holes until it seamed to heal properly.

Yesterday the cheek was closed, no swelling, nothing, but this morning the history repeated : another bag of pus which we had to wash out and we’ve set another drain. This time we’ve improvised the drain from a piece of latex glove, trying to louse as much as dead space inside. We’ve considered not to suture the drain on the skin but to make a loop and suture it by the ends, so that we can slide the drain inside while flushing the pus out.

Luckily today we’ve received the culture result (Klebsiella pneumoniae) and the antibiogram. It seems that every antibiotic we have given by now, it had resistance to it. Still there are a couple of others that is still sensible to : Amikacin, Gentamicin, Cloramfenicol. For now we only had in the clinic cloramphenicol in an eye ointment gel so we’ve put it inside the wound. Next days we hope to buy the other antibiotics in a systemic form.
The loris doesn’t mind the drain, is eating normally, did not loose any weight and temperature is in parameters.
During this period we had to treat also from stongildosis and ameobas, and animal most probably was immuno-suppressed.

So… our question to you:

Please tell us if we had done something wrong, starting with the drug management to the improvised drains. Hoping the antibiotics will work, should we consider some other type of surgical approach (make one bigger cut and check what’s under the muscles?, remove this rubber drain, because of future reaction/ or not leave it to slide and suture it?…), etc.

Ovidiu Rosu

International Animal Rescue Indonesia
www.internationalanimalrescue.org

IAR rescue-rehab-release center of orangutans in Ketapang, West Kalimantan Island, Indonesia.

Baby male orangutan, 7 kilos, 1,5 years, relapsing from Entameoba histolityca infection.

The problems started this January, with a first ameobiasis infection, being apathic and having mucous bloody feces. It was treated with the standard metronidazole 15mg/kg BID for 10 day,then the animal recovered.
After some weeks we saw that he was pale, we’ve took a look at the blood and saw he had malaria (pretty frequent in that area). He was treated for it and improved.

After the malaria episode, another couple of weeks had passed and we saw again signs of aptahy this time with high fever, low Ht and low trombocites. This time he was diagnosed having Dengue Fever.
After the recovery from the Dengue, it passed some other weeks and a new episode of infection with ameoba was seen. From this moment to presemt, another two more amoeba relapses had been treated.
We went up to 25mg/kg TID. The last treatment was done one month ago and we are afraid of another relapse.

We are looking for some other ways to combat this infection. The baby orangutan stays in a group of other young ones in a garden, although he eats, doesn’t have fever and he’s not dehydrated, is less active than his peers.

By now we’ve tried papaya leaves in the diet, normally it seems to work as a natural dewormer, but in this case not anymore.
We are trying to disinfect the food, and clean their spaces as thoroughly as possible.
We’ve also heard that high dosage of albendazol seems to work in cases of amoeba, but we are not sure what “high” means and in a case of an immunodeficient animal like this one… what would be the consequences?

We are asking you if you have any idea about other medicines that could work on ameobas, other dosages, some specific diet or management. We would also appreciate any info on other natural medicine or plants that could be introduce in the diet.

PS. if you know someone who might have an idea please forward this message

Internatioanl Animal Rescue Indonesia

http://www.internationalanimalrescue.org/

Ovidiu Rosu

Slow loris, endemic in Java Island, Indonesia, 780 grams, adult male (cannot tell the exact age), tail 1,5 cm, backbone problem

History
-was rescued and brought in the facility on the 12.10.2008, presenting dental problems and one eye with a corneal ulcer (BW 720 grmas). Except those two, the loris had no other clinically visible condition.

Dental extraction and topical eye treatment was performed with good healing.
Every couple of mounths a clinical check-up with deworming is made.
The last deworming was performed last week , and the body weight was last taken on the 14.01.2010 having 1.03 kilos- (a little obese (normally should be around 800g). The keepers have enough experience to see any change in the health and behaviour.

Which brings us now.

Three days ago the loris was seen in it’s rehab cage having problems moving around, although he  was eating normally and still capable of climbing (arboreal specie).

Once brought to the clinic it was easily seen the crunched back at the lumbar site. (normal number of lumbar vertebra is 6 or 7).

no visible inflammation, still on palpation one can easily feel the proemination of that spinous proces.
No sign of paralysis whatsoever….

I’ve made the X-ray and this is what came out (find attached).

Actually I don’t know where to begin with… is a fracture? congenital? neoformation? spondylosis?

We left him to rest in the clinic for the night but he didn’t eat so we decided to put him back to the rehab cage, where he’s doing well, maybe not that fast as before.
It seems that NSAIDS are not doing that good for the stomach of lorises so we use it only after surgery only for 3 days.

One other important fact is that in lorises the first sign when they are having pain is that they stop eating.

Please consider that our clinic is near the jungle and CT, RMN or other Sci-fi machines are not available.

What could be done? Start treatment with something (eg. tramadol) even if it doesn’t show signs of pain?

I will really appreciate your input.

ps. Lorises are endangered species, every single one counts!

Thank you very much!

Ovidiu Rosu

Internatioanl Animal Rescue Indonesia

http://www.internationalanimalrescue.org/

This is how you knew that your life must have to do something with wild animals, maybe even getting paid for it. Being a keeper was too big of an issue in your all university graduate family, a biologist you found it to be to much “bla-bla” about taxonomy and DNA stuff so the only thing left was the veterinary studies.

The first years of Uni you found them quite boring, all day long dogs, cats, horses, pigs and cows, but you’ve survived by telling yourself that all the animals share more or less the same principles of clinical approach, and you’re waiting for the good stuff to come. Although you always thought you are an “unique snowflake“ in vet med with all your wildlife dreams, you slowly found out that there are other snowflakes even cooler than you, and they seemed to do something professionally about it. Suddenly you panic, and desperately start joining groups and search all sorts of wildlife related medical experiences. Now, by the time you graduate you’re an active “forum” member of three different zoological and wildlife medicine societies, spent all your externship in different zoos as a student vet assistant, went to all the conferences and summer schools from exotics imagistic to sub-Saharan ruminants medicine, you are able to reassemble a CO2 dart gun blindly in less than one minute and if you were smart enough you’ve already “found” the right guy to put your name close to his on a peer reviewed article.

You’ve got yourself a diploma and tones of other shiny wildlife related attestations. You know everything …but not quite, if you really think about it!

Good. Now what?

Everybody says an internship in a zoo or a master and then a PhD in a research facility, should be the next step… But deep down inside something is troubling you, zoos are cool but you know that they are not the real thing, research is a lot of library/lab time and only a couple of days of action in the field, and not even that clinical. Not to forget that zoo internships and wildlife study grants are rare birds and the most difficult to get in veterinary medicine. Or maybe you’re just not smart enough to get one of those jobs…

Then … out of nowhere, you receive an e-mail from a forsaken friend, telling you he heard about a vet job in the middle of the wilderness and somehow he remembered you’re into this stuff.  You look condescending and suspicious, thinking to yourself how in Earth a job like this can pop up from a guy that didn’t had anything in common with your much cherished, member-only wildlife community. Still you take a look and you could not believe your eyes that is for real. Some sort of organization needs a vet just like you in the middle of the jungle to treat wild animals, and they also say that they provide transport, home, food, insurance and… a monthly wage. Now your heart starts to beat for the first time in a long time, it starts to beat excitement and some sort of fury. Fury because you were hoping that this sort of opportunity should come from your struggle, time and money within your wildlife community. But it seems that those sort of thing happen.

You start to google on the organization, you see nice pictures with wild animals and pretty cool places and then you decide to write them an e-mail that your interested on the job. They respond quite fast, ask for your CV and in a couple of days you’re on your way to give the interview.  Not that much of a medical interview, you tell to yourself silently, they were more focused on your capability to adapt and be opened to other cultures. The next day you find out that you’ve receive the job, and in two weeks you’ll have your 20 hours plane to, let’s pick a place…let’s pick the tropical rain forest.

You kiss your family and friends goodbye, most of them congratulate you for how cool you are that your going in such exotic places, but a couple of them are really angry on you because in such a short time, without any realistic plan, knowing no one, you’re leaving to the other side of the world. But you must follow your dream…

So you finally land, and once you put your first foot out of the plane… you notice something is wrong. You cannot breath properly. The air is so hot and so full with water that your temperate body just doesn’t cope with it.  Your body wants to sweat but the saturation of water in the air is too high and it doesn’t allow it… and than you overheat.

After boiling one hour and a half waiting for your custom stamp, you thank God that someone is really waiting with your name on a board. Even if you’re awfully tired your senses are still sharp so you start to take a look around and notice that people are always smiling at you. Why?…you’ll find out later.

You try to make a conversation with the driver but the only thing you could came up is that the 100 km trip to your center takes 4 to 5 hours. You think to yourself it takes that much because of the off-road in the forest, but this is not the reason. You don’t have to wait a long time to realize why. All the streets and highways are clogged with cars (and that was in a weekend in a non-rush hour). Along the street of all this 100 km you only were able to see 2/2m squeezed houses with people selling mostly fruits, gasoline and mobile phones. You start to wonder how in God’s name is this amount of population sustainable for the environment.

Than you arrive at your new one year by contract home, which looks more like a weekend room bamboo hut, smells like rotten wood and is already inhibited by at least 10 other species: geckos on the ceiling, mosquitoes in the bathroom, cockroaches in the drawers, spiders under the bed and ants … allover. At least your bathroom is European style. So, you throw everything and run desperate to take a shower when you freeze yourself to numbness feeling all that cold mountain water down your back… than you suddenly remember the job interview when they silently mentioned something about no heated water. From now on taking showers will be a boxing match, where first you have to warm yourself by running around the house for 10 minute and making 50 push-ups just to make the cold water bearable. Finished with the shower and you just want to sleep…but your first night is a pure torment. Mosquitoes are having a feast out of your new foreigner flash. You cannot lose the image from your head how they are injecting malarial sporozoites into your capillaries, but you decided to cure it and not to prevent it… the thought of one year of daily quinine derivates inside your bloodstream makes you suffocate.

You wake up full with reddish blisters, jet lagged tired and in another world but you are too excited and you can’t wait to see your new patients, the wild animals. On the way to your center somebody sees your bites and gives you a little hint: be careful with the stripped mosquitoes, they are the one with the Dengue fever  (yeah, the hemorrhagic, “brake-bone” myalgic one).  And also tells you that during your stay you’ll probably have all the diseases: malaria, dengue, dysentery… but don’t worry you’ll get used with them, fortunately there are treatments and you can afford them. … In that moment you suddenly enter in your bubble of denial thinking that person is talking about flu. You feel something shifting inside your wild dreams.

You finally arrive at your new job place. The clinic you find it pretty accessorized, especially form a jungle point of view. You have an X-ray machine, a Iso-machine, a nice OP-room… but strangely enough the only thing you are looking for is the microscope and the staining equipment.

Then you go see the animals. And they look wild! You weight them in your mind and think of all the chemical immobilization drugs and restraining techniques you’re going to apply on them. You now have your first smile from when you said goodbye to the airplane stewardess. You’re having your moment.

The next days you find yourself for the first time in your medical life reading about human diseases. You catch yourself poking your fingers with needles and making blood smears. Constantly looking for those blackish spots inside the red blood cells, you’ll eventually cross upon them, and than you panic! You suddenly start to feel feverish and desperately go to a human lab where they bleed you and test your blood properly. After a couple of hours the test comes up negative and you feel no fever anymore; people are looking funny at you and your big stupid smile, but you don’t care: you are free of malaria… yet. What your eyes saw in that microscope was just a frequent bad stain artifact.

Pretty much the same for intestinal parasites and bacteria.

From time to time you find yourself in the position to treat other “more evolved” patients. People desperately come at you to help them after they’ve been bitten by a snake or have got a trauma. They cannot afford a human doctor so you are their last hope. Mostly every day you hear someone coming across a snake, green one, black one, water one, cobra or viper one, and every other week a long green one or a short thin one crosses your path in a blink of an eye… “but don’t worry you’ve eventually get used to them, is just a matter of time until you…”.

They call it the rain-forest for a reason. Is because is raining ! Everyday for a couple of hours, and you are now in the wet season. Computers, photo cameras and even cloths,  if somehow they were lucky enough not to get wet from the dripping ceilings, start to get moldy from the humidity after a while. No electronic device is really safe even if you spent a lot of money and specifically bought the waterproof ones. When outside, you start to cover yourself in plastic and rubber textiles to keep you dry, but immediately those will turn your body into walking stove …until you’ll not care anymore and get yourself soaking wet.

Language and culture.  It’s fun and enlightening…maybe if you were in holiday. Your over 25 years brain is just not into learning another language, you already babble 4 maybe 5 of them. Your brain is sparkled when reading philosophy and science, not start again learning colors and numbers with completely other words and feel like a complete moron when you’re trying to ask for a glass of water and they’ll bring you a chair. The culture is fabulous to admire during festivals, inside temples or expositions but in the everyday life you can only see people disposing their garbage wherever they found it more convenient, decaying matter alongside street markets, mobile little “restaurants” with food buzzing with flies or animals kept in the most horrific conditions.

And not to forget that your skin color is different, which somehow means money, and everyone with a service will try to rip you off. Now you realize why all that guys were smiling at you in the airport. The first times you don’t mind that much but after a while it gets annoying and frustrating. You also are paid the minimum.

You then turn back to your hut after a wild day at work and you look in the mirror. You ask yourself who are you and what are you doing so far away from the people who love you as you are. What do you want to prove, who are you running from, what are you looking for? Is it worth giving everything away to follow a childhood dream? If yes… than you are going to be a great wildlife vet.

All I can say is: be careful what you wish because it just may happen.

by Ovidiu Rosu

This is the slideshow/clip that is trying to visually summarize our experience there. Enjoy!

Ovidiu Rosu

For almost two months the loris has a deep laceration on the plantar side of the hand with 2 fingers been amputated due to a fight with another peer. The laceration affected the finger tendons, and from the 3 renaming fingers, only the big thumb is functional.  It was been given systemically NSAIDs (carpofen) and antibiotics (clindomicyn) for most of this period, without any improvement. It seems that laceration in lorises tend to have a very low healing rate. It was considered the amputation of the hand, but due to the climbing behavior of the lorises and the fact that the remaining fingers were still vascularised, it was considered to try saving the hand. So, for the last three weeks the animal had the hand properly cleaned up and daily a soft bandage was changed.  The animal had to be put under Isoflurane anesthesia, due to the pain caused by the intervention and  lorises particular strength and difficulty of hand restrain.

Until no pus was present, the first week the wound was flushed with saline mixed wit penicillin. For the bandage, a placenta extract gel with neomicyn (Bioplacenton) was putted on the wound witch was covered by a antibacterial gauze dressing (Sofra-tulle) and then normal sterile cotton gauze and Lucoplast band. For the anesthesia , it was considered to use only the mask  with Isoflorane , without any other injectible drug.

Tips for anesthesia : Start with 2 L/min Oxigen and set the Iso to 2, then decrease O2 to 1-1,5 L and set the Iso to 1,5 (use less than this , the animal will wake up). This  only Iso protocol works like a charm!!! : in 2 minutes the loris is asleep and the intervention can start. You can turn down the Iso when you start to cover the bandage with the Leucoplast (don’t use that stupid vet-trap auto-adhesive bandage, is squeezing to much), and by the time you finish, the loris is awake! This only-Iso protocol works really nice for small mammals and birds for minor interventions.

After the second week of changing the bandage, the wound started to look better, more vascularised and per secondam tissue was seen, but it seemed that the Isoflurane was irritating the airways and the loris started to caught wile awaking from the anesthesia. By the looks of the bandage it was consider to change it every other day and give time to recovery from Iso.

If the wound continues to look better, we would consider to remove completely the bandage in one week

Ovidiu Rosu

Ioana