Wednesday, October 7, 2009

more cases


(me spaying a bunny:)
Sorry it's been so long since a post. Here are some more cases:

Here is a chameleon. Many male reptiles have reproductive organs completely separate from the urinary system--two structures (phallus) called hemipenes. These hemipenes can prolapse, or come out abnormally (and the animal can't retract them back in).


Here, the chameleon's tail is to the right and he is being held upside down. His hemipenes are prolapsed (two red structures).

Initial treatment is to push them back in and suture the openings closed. If they reprolapse when you take the sutures out, they might have to have them amputated--which we can do b/c they don't contain any part of the urinary system. So, we need to figure out what caused them to prolapse in the first place and correct it or they will prolapse again (parasites, husbandry, hormonal causes, etc)

This bird has an abnormal beak (obviously...)

several things can cause this such as congenital deformity (genetics--had since birth) or liver disease, and can be caused simply from an all seed diet (seed to birds is like junk food--they need a balanced diet consisting of veggies and commercial pellets).


And of course i couldn't end a blog w/o showing a picture of pus (you've been warned)

here is a turtle who has an abscess in his ear (hard to see, but it's the swelling on the right side of his head). Turtles often get these because they lack vitamin A (b/c owners don't feed them properly--a lot of exotic health problems are because we don't properly care for them, if you haven't figured that out yet:)\

here is the doctor squeezing the pus out of the ear...

and here is the pus when it was out:) don't you wish you had my job?

what are YOU looking at??