So it was found in the Coromandel, but I'm not 100% sure where, because they brought it to the local bird rescue.
It's often the young birds that get grabbed by a dog because they're not fast enough,
or they're just not that strong. So we're just now gonna give it some pre-medication
which is just to sedate it a little bit before we do a full anesthesia.
They have tough skin, but actually might make these dog bites even worse
because it's the tissue at the outside seems okay, but that it's the inside the big damage is.
So we're gonna assess it now. We're gonna take some radiographs, we're gonna take some bloods,
and we're also going to give the medications, so it's a lot of pain relief, antibiotics.
The assessment we make today is actually to also make a decision on how much chance this bird has
to get through, because these ones are really severe and often don't end well.
So if there is also internal injuries or severe fractures and internal bleedings and all that,
then the best decision might be that we euthanise the bird.
So she's knuckling a lot which can be due to the pain,
but can also mean there is damage to the nerves which would be more worrying.
So, can show all the damage, the dog must have grabbed it here, like that it doesn't look too bad
but all that redness means there is real big damage underneath,
and here it's too yellowish, which also means damage underneath.
The problem with this bite was as that is in humans,
is that a dog grabs and actually shakes it, and you might not see too much at the outside,
there might be only a small puncture wound,
but underneath all the tissues are very damaged, as they call like a 'crush injury'.
Okay I'm gonna come that side.
The worst thing for a kiwi is also damage to the beak, their smell is really important
to find the food and probe it. So we see some bruising here, a small cut.
It's mainly the top where the nose and the smell is, that's extremely important. That looks okay.
We always tape a bit to get everything in position.
So I have woken up our kiwi and given something to wake it up more quickly,
but it still has all the pain relief and all the medication and so that it feels okay.
When they wake up like that they're kind of leaning on their big because they still feel a bit weak.
So we're gonna now have another look at the x-rays to look more in detail on our bigger screen
to make sure that we don't see any other damage there. When I had a quick look I couldn't see any major fractures
on the leg so that's a good thing, but when I looked with the ultrasound there's quite a lot of damage
on the muscles on that leg, which is kind of as expected. So we're going to review the x-rays further
and we're also going to wait for the blood results, so at this point we don't know for sure yet,
we know there is a lot of severe damage, but we don't know yet if it will make it through or not
so that we need to assess over the next few days. This kind of injuries we know this is a dog bite
and it sadly enough still happens quite a lot, because people do not keep the dogs on a leash.
They're very quick at finding the kiwis and smelling them because they have a very special smell,
so the dog will know where it is, and will chase it, and will bite it, and cause like severe injuries,
but people should really keep the dogs on the leash to avoid this kind of situation,
because it's really hard to get them through trauma like this, much better to avoid it
and make sure dogs don't get to the kiwi, and it's especially young kiwis like these ones
so might be a little bit slower, or a bit less strong, a bit smaller that they will be caught by a dog.