#veterinary pathology

[hawthornhawk]

Red fox commission piece. Severely disfigured but completely healed injury! Radiographs and skull under the cut. This piece was a real challenge but I’m so glad I got the chance to preserve him

I am a licensed taxidermist, all pieces are legally sourced and held

[theoddvet]

These have to be the most expressive cells I have ever seen in my life.

[lizziedoesvetpath]

Necrosis of the pyramidal neurons

The classic necrotic neuron is the "dead red". Shrunken, angular, and hypereosinophilic (red) with a pyknotic nucleus, scattered dead neurons can be associated with a wide range of neurologic disease. Necrosis of the pyramidal neurons in the hippocampus is commonly associated with seizure activity, particularly in the CA2 and CA3 regions. Whether this necrosis is the cause or effect of the seizure activity is not always entirely clear, although it is typically attributed to the abnormal electrical activity and hypoxia associated with seizures.

(embroidery by @lizziedoesvetpath)

[shadythetortie]

One of the funniest things as a vet tech when you send samples to the lab is when you go "hey what is this"

And the lab comes back teo weeks later with "man i dont fuckin know!! Let me ask my colleagues"

And then

"Man we dont fuckin know!! This shit's crazy!! Could be this tho"

[vetisntdead]

Me, asking essentially a rhetorical question: "How badly can a student fuck up on pathology? I mean, it's already dead."

Housemate: "Well, they could bring it back to life."

Me: O.o

Housemate: "what"

Me: "No necromancy in my lab!"

[oddarticulations]

They say two heads are better than one, right?

[theramseyloft]

Trichomonas gallinae from Pigeons to Raptors

I talk a lot about why feral pigeons should be treated like stray dogs in other posts, from the perspective of them being being a species as purely domesticated as Dogs, which can’t survive away from humans.

They should not be clogging up wildlife rehabs, whose resources should be reserved exclusively for the native wildlife for which they were set up.

(Not one sane person would advocate releasing stray dogs among rehabbed wolves or coyotes, no matter how many generations of them had been born in that alley.)

There is no benefit to releasing feral pigeons “back into the wild”.

Certainly not for the pigeons... who are exclusively dependent on human hand outs or garbage for food and building to roost and nest.

Not for the people, who are generally disgusted by the byproduct of sick, hungry ferals, which does serious structural damage because of the high uric acid content of feces from birds who have not been able to get enough to eat.

Not even for their predators.

Because of the way their medical care is traditionally handled, lost pigeons and their feral decedents are unsafe for predatory birds to eat.

As stated in the previous post, Performing breed breeders and fliers go one of two ways regarding birds with any symptoms of illness:

Either

1. They don’t waste money on treating a sick a sick bird. If it’s sick enough to affect its performance, that specific one is just killed.

Or

2. They use a fraction of the dose of the meds designed to treat an actively symptomatic bird as a monthly “preventive” for the entire flock.

Killing off a bird that’s symptomatic doesn’t mean the other birds in that loft and flying from it don’t have that pathogen.

It just means that they aren’t showing symptoms.

Aaaand using small doses of a treatment as a monthly “preventive” would have any one anywhere near the fields of pathology and epedimiology tearing their hair out in horrified frustration...

Because that is praaactically step by step instructions in how to build up a pathogen’s immunity to a treatment.

Whish brings us to this heinous little bastard;

which causes Trichomoniasis; Trich/canker/frounce.

Trichomonas gallinae eats epithelial cells lining the sinus, crop, and trachea, and forms plaques that make it very difficult for meds to get to as a defense mechanism against the immune system of its host.

Individuals are highly motile, moving with three sets of flagella.

Making it very easy to go septic.

There are three ways this parasite spreads:

1. Mouth to mouth feeding between mates or from parent to nestling.

(By far the most common in columbids)

2. Eating seeds thrown up by a starving late stage bird who physically can’t swallow them

(A common way to transmit it to song birds)

3. Eating an infected prey bird.

Pretty much any bird can catch and transmit the protozoan parasite Trichomonas gallinae, which causes Trichomoniasis; Trich/canker/frounce.

But most wild birds die from it very quickly, leaving it only a brief opportunity to spread to a new host.

What makes the feral descendants of racers and other performance breeds of domestic pigeon in particular especially dangerous carriers to raptors is their high immunity to it.

While a pigeon would have to have an active infection to spread trich to song bird (via vomited seed), an infected pigeon doesn’t have to be symptomatic to spread the parasite to a raptor, who is exposed directly by eating them in bite-sized pieces.

I have purchased birds from grand champion show breeders who looked to be in perfect health on arrival...

But their throats were swarming with Trich when swabbed. (part of my standard quarantine procedure)

Nearly every feral that’s entered our program through rescue has had a crop load of Trich, but were completely asymptomatic on arrival.

A raptor that had eaten one of these birds that was “healthy” by all appearances would still have sickened from it and died with out immediate veterinary intervention.

Our livestock doesn't exist in a bubble.

What we do (or don’t do) with our domesticated animals has consequences.

And when your biosecurity is nonexistent, and you either half ass treatment of a pathogen or don’t bother to treat at all, outbreaks are inevitable, and devastating to outside populations.

Pigeon fanciers talk about Canker like it’s nothing. Pop one pill and it’s done.

But this parasite is devastating.

And the way it’s treated by fanciers practically guarantees a fast track to developing drug resistance.

Domestic Pigeons left “in the wild” or “returned” to it not only have no beneficial niche to fill and no way to keep themselves fed,

They act as a reservoir for increasingly resistant pathogens practically engineered by the half-assed veterinary care of the fliers who provide a constant stream of new blood as racers and other performance breeds are lost from races or tosses or separated from kits.

Because of this, as much as the moral issue of having abandoned them in the first place, feral pigeons should not be ignored.

It is possible to drastically reduce their numbers with out any inhumane measures.

Taubbenhouses, comfortable shelters where nest boxes, feed, and water are provided, and any eggs laid are swapped for fakes, work wonders for population control.

With out injections, trapping, or poison, the reproductive rates of feral populations where this strategy was employed decreased by 95%.

Imagine combining that with better veterinary care for pigeons who belong to fanciers...

Maybe we could avoid...

This.

(Graphic photos under the cut)

This pigeon died of Trich.

By the look of it, those plaques went straight to its lungs...

This wood pigeon's entire throat was blocked.

Here is a septic pigeon (three and a half weeks old or so), with lesions all the way down its digestive tract.

Another septic pigeon (adult), with lesions all over its liver and even laced into its muscle tissue.

This is what happens when a hawk eats a pigeon with resistant trich.

This owl probably wasn’t able to swallow around that lesion 

This falcon chick (in particular danger due to falcons primarily preying on other birds) won’t be able to swallow soon.

This owl's choanal slit, glottis, and esophagus have been completely blocked off.

This peregrine (post-op) was lucky to have survived.

From the article ( http://www.shropshireperegrines.co.uk/news/news.html ):

“June 2014 - Peregrine chick treated for Trichomonas Gallinae

Two young peregrines, one male and one female, have been recovered in a distressed state from a scrape in north Shropshire by members of the Group and taken for treatment at the Cuan Wildlife Rescue Centre at Much Wenlock.

On examination both birds were diagnosed with "trichomonias gallinae", an infection affecting the birds' mouths, throat and eyes. According to the vet who examined the birds, the infection had most probably occurred by eating infected pigeon meat. Unfortunately the female chick did not survive.”

[er-cryptid]

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