Hi, everyone. My name's Elleesha.
I work as part of the rescue unit here at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital.
Unfortunately, over the last few weeks we've seen an influx of owls
come into the hospital.
Now we're going to share with you a few of their stories.
[Dr. Bert] Hi, friend.
How are you feeling, little buddy?
So here today we've got a barn owl on initial examination.
He's just really quiet.
The poor guy doesn't look very well at all.
He doesn't seem to want to do much or demonstrate any flight for us.
[Dr. Taylor] So this is Sawyer.
Sawyer is an Australian masked owl.
It's suspected that he's been hit by a car.
One's a sooty owl, and since the hospital's been open, we haven't seen many at all.
So, Doctor Emily's going to have a look at that one.
[Dr. Emily] Poor Moon, you absolute stunner.
Let's go for your health check.
[Dr Emily] Fully anesthetise him,
and we'll just see what he's doing with that foot.
[Dr Bert] Mask there? Would this one work?
Keep hold of those talons.
[Dr. Emily] He's just going to breathe that gas in.
And then our plan today is to take the bandage off,
see how the leg is looking, and to get some X-rays
to assess how that fracture is healing.
It's been four weeks since Moon came in with really severe head trauma
and a fracture of the tarsometatarsal bone
that was really quite nasty.
So his fracture is actually
in the middle of this bone here called the tarsometatarsis
and it's quite swollen around the site, which is what we'd actually expect.
It's really just the legs we're interested in today.
All righty.
Let's get that X-ray
And this little area here where it's you can't see a nice
clean line for the bones is where the fracture has occurred.
So Moon is heading in the correct direction, which is really lovely to see.
Better put your little foot boot on.
So Moon gets one more splint for a week
and then hopefully we can look at removing it
at our next bandage change in seven days time.
...into a little upright position there.
Awwww, Moon.
and I'm just gonna- [Moon vocalises] Aww sweetie.
We want to keep you nice and warm there Moon.
[Dr. Bert] So we're just putting him under a bit of short general anesthetic
for the moment while we run some preliminary tests.
We need a name for him.
Barnaby! Have we use Barnaby?
So we've noticed a bit of blood in his mouth and near his airways.
There could be a number of reasons for that, including possible causes
of trauma, as if he's been hit by a car, flown into a window or things like that,
and caused a bit of bleeding in his airways or in his digestive tract.
It's usually best if you can see if he can get this side down.
And looking over our friend,
he didn't really have many bruises or externally visible injuries.
That makes the detective work a little bit more challenging.
But we've taken the x rays and fortunately it's shown us that there aren't
any serious fractures or any anything that needs repair or obvious surgery to fix.
It could just have been that our friend's flown head first into the window
or a wall, which is not an uncommon thing for some birds to do unfortunately.
And it would explain some of the way he's behaving if he suffered a bit of a brain injury
as well as some of the blood that we can find in his mouth.
The plan for the time being will be
to start him on some good pain relief and to give him a little bit of time
with some good medications, fluids and supportive care
while we wait and see how he recovers from his brain injury and his ordeal.
[Dr. Taylor] So he's had a lot of chest trauma and also on his bloods it was indicated
that he had a nasty infection going on.
He's been in care with us for a week now and we're just going to make sure
he's tracking in the right direction.
So now I'm just going to take some blood from him
so that I can have a look and make sure the infection's getting better.
But he's definitely improving and doing better day by day.
He doesn't like us being near him, which is a sign of a good owl.
So we're just going to take some X-rays of him.
We'll do this one as two views,
One the top half, one the leg half.
His X-rays have improved, which is awesome.
If all of these tests come back showing that he's happy and healthy,
We'd be considering release for him in the next few days.
All right you can go wake him up.
So I'm really happy with everything we've seen on him today.
Now we're going to go have a look at those bloods,
make sure they're getting better, and just have another
look at over those X-rays and make sure they're still looking good.
There's still a lot of white blood cells on his blood.
It's definitely improved significantly, but I'll keep him on his antibiotics
for a little bit longer, and then we'll look at releasing him
in another week or so.
[Elleesha] We absolutely love owls, so it breaks our heart
to see so many coming into the wildlife hospital.
A lot of owls are nocturnal, which means they're most active
at night time, and that's when they go hunting for their food.
So it's really important to slow down on our roads at night
to try and prevent these accidents from happening.