The Accipiter - Vets Corner June 2005

Vet's Corner - June 2005

John Chitty, the park’s vet, gives us some insight into the healthcare and maintenance of raptors as well as the injuries and illnesses that they fall victim to, and how he treats them...

In this first article, John lets us see how he first became involved with our birds

Starting at The Hawk Conservancy

I started doing veterinary work for the Conservancy soon after I qualified nearly fifteen years ago but my involvement there had started a few years earlier.

I’d had no training with birds but was required to spend a fortnight in a zoological park as part of the veterinary course. As the Conservancy was close to home and I had no experience with birds (in fact I was quite scared of them!) it seemed a good idea to spend some time there. Anyhow, like many others who have started working with raptors the bug was caught and I spent some time at the park most vacations during the rest of my course. Certainly the fear of birds had gone by this time!

John Chitty with Gryfalcon Hades

During this period I was also spending a lot of time at Strathmore Veterinary Clinic (where I currently work) as it was my “home practice”. This enabled me to spend a lot of time with Dennis Smith who was the vet for the Conservancy.

I qualified in 1990 which was just when Dennis was stepping down from the clinic to concentrate on meat inspection. I therefore had to start working with birds for real within two months of qualifying. Ashley, Reg and Jim Chick were a huge help at this time. Avian medicine is not straightforward and when you are newly qualified all the other areas are daunting too especially as I was working on farms as well as dogs and cats at this stage.

It was a very steep learning curve and many mistakes were made. Hopefully the same mistakes were not repeated too often! Everyone at the park was very supportive and that meant that, not only did I have the benefit of their considerable experience, but it meant that I could learn from both good and bad results.
Fortunately, too, the early nineties coincided with an explosion in knowledge of avian medicine. In 1992 I joined the Association of Avian Veterinarians (AAV) and this gave me access to a lot of up-to-date information. I am now secretary to the European committee of the AAV and hopefully putting in knowledge and experience to help those setting out.

In 1995 we got our first isoflurane anaesthetic machine. This revolutionised avian medicine as, at long last, we had a safe anaesthetic agent for birds. Before that halothane and methoxyflurane were used. These were much more dangerous and difficult to use. This meant that we only anaesthetised birds when we absolutely had to, so we either stressed them by performing more handling procedures or even felt that, as we couldn’t safely anaesthetise the bird, it was kinder to perform euthanasia. Now we perform many more diagnostic procedures and investigations under anaesthesia and the quick recovery from isoflurane means the bird can be standing on its perch in the time it takes to walk from the hospital!

There have been other advances too. We know much more about fluid therapy, and this can be a life-saver for a shocked bird. When I first started, everyone was worried about crop tubing fluids to birds. Now all injured birds receive medications, fluids and nutrition in this way, which has improved our success rates.
There are also specialist labs available that are comfortable handling avian bloods and tissues and this has helped us in making many diagnoses.

In all this has been a very exciting time to be involved in avian medicine, and I hope I am now in a position to be returning all the help that was given to me when I started. I now spend the vast majority of my time working with birds and other exotic animals, and hopefully the problems I first encountered have enabled me to learn and help others.

This has all grown from two weeks spent at the park to help get over a fear of birds! And I can honestly say that, without the Hawk Conservancy’s help and support in those difficult early years this would never have happened; thanks!

John Chitty BVetMed CertZooMed MRCVS