#scriptvet

[scriptveterinarian]

Hello! I was wondering if a chicken could be a travelling companion for an adventurer. Could it lay eggs? If yes, how often?

Assuming you have a human-sized adventurer, I see no reason why they couldn’t have a chicken traveling with them. They may have to keep the chicken in a cage, and I’m not certain how combat effective she’s likely to be, but it could be done.

Most domestic chickens lay eggs even in the absence of a rooster. Commercial layer hens may lay 300+ eggs a year, typically one a day. Heritage breeds, particularly meat breeds, may be as low as 60-80 eggs a year. They typically lay one egg a day through the period of the year with the longer day lengths, i.e. spring and summer. When chickens go through a molt, they stop laying.

However, this means that if your adventurer is traveling underground where there isn’t any daylight, the chicken may stop laying.

- Dr Ferox

[scriptveterinarian]

How bad are paralysis ticks? The Australian kind? For my Nano, I have this scene of where a family's house is infested with ticks and the father nearly dies. Can they kill or at least bed-rid a man? Or I'm overblowing things?

Ixodes holocyclus is the most common species of paralysis tick in Australia, essentially limited in its distribution to the Eastern seaboard. Humans are not really my thing, but most human cases reported have been children because their smaller size makes them more vulnerable, and they may be less able to express that they’ve been bitten.

They tend not to infest houses so much as grassy areas that have a lot of native mammals pass through, so if the house is in bushland the garden may be host to these ticks.

Tick paralysis needs requires hospitalization if it occurs, but an adult human would likely require multiple ticks attached for a prolonged period to cause paralysis. However, these ticks can also cause anaphylaxis which will potentially kill your adult human. Check out Aunt Scripty’s write up on anaphylaxis for more information.

Australian ticks can also cause mammalian meat allergy, where the bitten human may develop lift threatening allergies to consuming mammalian meat. That’s a nasty little complication that not a lot of people know about.

- Dr Ferox.

For more information see: Reference 1, Reference 2, and more about mammalian meat allergy.

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[scriptveterinarian]

Hi! One of my character's cats (adult but age otherwise unspecified, neutered male) is going to get hit by a car. As a result he has to have a hind leg amputated - how long would he stay at the vets, what would his recovery from this look like and how long would it take? Also, what other injuries would he be likely to sustain? Thanks!

Leg amputation in a cat looks like a brutal surgery, but the recovery period is not all that long. The cat may be discharged to its owner’s care that evening, or the next day. I’d then expect it to spend two weeks or so recovering, during which time it needs to be strictly confined.

However, if a cat was hit by a car then it may have other injuries that necessitate it staying in hospital for longer, either before or after the leg amputation. If the cat has sustained chest or abdominal trauma, care of those injuries will be prioritized before the leg amputation, as you want the cat to survive the anesthesia.

Low speed impacts, such as running over the cat in the driveway while parking the car, can have bruising and crushing injuries but do less damage than high speed impacts. High speed impacts may also result in the following:

Diaphragm rupture, which will require major surgery to repair and will likely result in having a chest drain and multiple days of intensive care

Bladder rupture, which can result if the cat is struck while its bladder is full. This may not be diagnosed for a day or so but will then require abdominal surgery to repair.

Gut ruptures, splenic ruptures and liver lacerations are relatively rare, but would also require abdominal surgery.

The cat is also likely to have superficial abrasions, they also commonly shred their nails when being hit by a car. They may have fractured teeth also.

Cat generally heal very well if you can put all the pieces close enough together. It’s also worth knowing that cats with hind limb amputations will still attempt to scratch their ear with the absent hind leg, though this seems to be the only thing that really holds them back. They are generally very mobile and active compared to pre-amputation, but may be more at risk of arthritis.

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[scriptveterinarian]

Hi! Question: are there on call vets like there are with doctors? If so, how does that work (i.e. how long are they on call and stuff)? Thanks!

Yes, veterinarians provide out of hours services, though how those services are structured will depend on the type of service the veterinarian usually provides, and where they’re located.

For example in small animal medicine, you may have a dedicated 24 hour clinic that the general practice clinics refer to. This clinic may be open overnight, weekends and public holidays only (that is to say, the reverse of the normal clinics), or they might be truly 24 hours. This situation is where you’re likely to find your emergency specialists and the fancy toys, including CT scanners and automatic ventilators.

For some reasons (usually political) or in places too sparsely populated to maintain a 24 hour clinic, the GP vets generally provide an after hours service. Clinics will vary, but either the phones are diverted to their mobile, or a message on the answering machine and door will tell you who to call when the clinic is closed. If there are multiple clinics in the same location, they may ‘share’ the after hours load in order to give themselves more breaks in between.

Large animal clinics, and mixed practices, often work this way. This is especially true where the value of the individual patient isn’t all that high (eg cattle).

Equine medicine may work this way with mobile vets, or they may have staff on duty in a fixed location hospital. Sometimes they’re just called in as needed. Partly this depends on how busy they expect to be.

Specialists of most disciplines often have an on-call roster, where they take turns being on call. In this situation the calls are fielded by the other after-hours staff, only calling in the specialist where required. For example, if I’m working overnight and I get a minor surgery that I can manage, I treat it myself. If it has a broken leg, it’s triaged and managed until morning when the surgeon gets in, and then handed across. If a patient presents with complete paralysis and loss of deep pain sensation in its hind legs, then surgeon-boy (they are not all boys, but the one who always seems to be rostered on when I am is) gets called in. 

Some specialists do not have a roster, but the emergency clinics have a means to contact them. There is very rarely a dermatology emergency, for example. Some consultants or individual vets may also choose to hand out their  personal mobile numbers for special cases.

As to how long a vet should be on call, well, what ‘should’ be and what ‘actually is’ is often very different, and laws will vary by country.

A typical ‘on-call’ period is 24 hours, but a veterinarian can be expected to do multiple on-call periods in a row (eg Friday, Saturday, Sunday). A vet working on their own in practice might be on call every single night for their entire working lives.

This, typically, drives one a bit crazy.

The sheer unpredictability and broken sleep of on call work isn’t great for your mental health. It’s not as though you get the next day off to sleep if you get called in, unless you’re working in a dedicated 24 hour center. (Dedicated 24 hour clinics have made my life so much better, you just do not understand unless you’ve lived it.)

Nine continuous days and nights on call is the most I’ve had to do, and let me assure you I was loopy by the end of it. That’s not normal or good, a more typical situation isn’t more than 1 in 3, but it does happen.

[scriptveterinarian]

I have a dog character and some wolf characters, and I've heard that there's a bit of a "language barrier" between the two species. And I was wondering how I would portray that? It's in first person.

This will depend on which species your Point Of View is coming from. 

Wolves and dogs are of course very similar, similar enough to crossbreed, but they are also distinctly different species. Compared to wolves, dogs generally are:

More juvenile in their appearance and behaviour, (neoteny)

Less independent of humans (frequently defaulting to ‘ask the human’ in their problem solving)

Less lateral thinking in problem solving

Sound more like wolf puppies

Potentially very different physical appearance

So if you anthropomorphise this for storytelling, a wolf meeting a dog might encounter a creature that looks similar enough to it, but sounds and thinks like a child when it looks like it should be an adult, and has no understanding of etiquette, and misunderstands social queues. And despite acting, sounding and thinking like a child, the dog engages in what should be strictly adult activities like reproduction.

Or it might look like something completely non-recognisable as a wolf (think what a wolf must think a shih tzu is), but still sounds like a child. 

Personally that starts to feel like some kind of uncanny valley child demon horror story.

From the dog’s point of view, it might be like a child looking on an adult, a being with more abilities and knowledge than they had considered before, but who has rules that they just didn’t know were there.

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[scriptveterinarian]

hey, sorry if this is a question better directed to aunt scripty! i have a character with severe anxiety who doesn't have any medication left, so they take their cat's anti-anxiety meds (inadvisable, i'm sure) so i was wondering what effect that might have? would it work? are there serious health concerns (what if they do this for a more extended amount of time??)?

This will depend on which anxiety medication the human and the cat are taking. You might want to follow up with @scriptshrink or @scriptpharmacist for additional information.

There aren’t all that many vet-only anxiety medications which come as tablets. Most of what we have available are actually the same drugs as those used in human medication, with a few important differences:

Different dose rate and tablet concentration (typically lower)

Compounded to be palatable for the cat (i.e. tastes like cat food)

The most common anxiety medication for cats in Australia is clomipramine, which comes as 5mg tablets. The human clomipramine comes as 25mg tablets, so taking the cat’s medication will result in an under dose and possible withdrawal side effects.

Another common anxiety medication for cats is fluoxetine, better known as Prozac. It can be specially compounded into small doses for cats, or they may be breaking up human tablets. If they’re using a brand of human fluoxetine, it’s only the dose rate which will be different.

Yet another possible anxiety medication the cat might be on is Megestrol Acetate, which is a type of progesterone. This will potentially have side effects on your character’s hormone cycles.

But side effects on humans aren’t really my field.

I do know of cases where humans with anxiety owned cats with anxiety, and their medication was mixed up. Generally the cat is the one in the most trouble in this situation.

Disclaimer.

[scriptveterinarian]

Speaking of interestingly colored kitties, why are almost all ginger cats male? Are ginger females extremely rare? Are they able to produce viable offspring or are they barren?

Ginger female cats are not rare and they are perfectly normal cats.

Going back to our possible crosses for the black and ginger genes, for these possible parent combinations we have the following expected offspring:

And if you cross a ginger queen with a ginger tom, you will get all ginger kittens, both male and female. So from the potential crosses which produce ginger kittens we see:

A: 0 ginger kittens

B: 1/2 ginger male kittens

C: 1/4 ginger female kittens, 1/4 ginger male kittens

D: 1/4 ginger male kittens

Pure cross: 1/2 ginger female kittens, 1/2 ginger male kittens.

If black and ginger genes are equally as common in a population, and these cats are mating randomly, the kitten population will have twice as many ginger male kittens than ginger female kittens.

So ginger queens are less common, but they’re far from rare. You can’t say “almost all ginger cats are male” like you can say “almost all tortoiseshell cats are female) because one exists in a ratio of 1:2 and the other 1:1,000.

[scriptveterinarian]

Two question, in regards to werewolves. 1. In my headcanon, werewolves in wereform sweat like horses, what would this look like or smell like? Is sweating something horses in full winter coat do? 2. How much would a kinked/damaged tail affect a canine's balance on all fours? What about standing on two legs?

If you mean sweating over most of the body in a relatively long coat, it depends on how active your werewolf is. If they’re not too active:

If they are very active (or if wearing something that rubs) the sweat may begin to foam. This looks quite dramatic.

Horses can exert themselves to the point of sweating in a full winter coat. Every mammal can, which is why part of survival advice in cold weather is to not push yourself too hard.

Sweat smells like sweat. ScriptEquestrian might be able to help you more with that particular detail, though.

As for a kinked tail, it’s probably not going to affect balance on all four legs, a quadrupedal stance is pretty stable, though as the tail acts somewhat as a counterbalance it might reduce some dexterity when turning at speed. This is likely to be less of an issue than it would have been for a feline species.

On two legs, it will depend on how upright your werewolves are. The more upright they stand, the less of an issue it will be. If the tail is kinked to the side, then the individual may learn to hold the tail more to the other side

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