Guinea surgery tomorrow!

[solanaskyes]

Quote:
Yeah, the cost would have been prohibitive without my friend (have I mentioned I have the best vet in the world??

). He would have had to be euthanized, at least this way we all got an educational experience and Stumpy gets a good chance of recovery. As it is, I just paid for the cost of the anesthetic gas.

I have him penned up right now while he recovers and has to have antibiotic injections daily. He's been pacing the fence of his pen wanting to get out to be with his buddies. He walks on the foot, but will hold it up whenever he's just standing. We think it's probably a combination of pain and the bandage, but we're hoping the bandage will stay on and dry for another week. I'll try to get a couple pictures of him and maybe a video clip tomorrow, not sure he's totally out of the woods yet since guineas seem to have a self destruct mechanism, but he seems to be doing well.

 

[WestKnollAmy]

Fascinating! I love my Guinea birds but none of my vet friends would probably attempt this. When I just ask a question about the chickens they always say "Euthanasia."

You have to be a special person to take on stuff like this!

Good luck to you and Stumpy!

 

[solanaskyes]

Stumpy update: He still seems to be on the mend, unfortunately, it's rained here the last couple nights, so to try to keep his bandage dry, I moved him into a dog crate in our outbuilding. He was not pleased and still managed to get his foot wet by dumping his water bucket last night. I just removed the bandage, gave him an antibiotic shot, and turned him loose with his buddies again.

Pics:

Day after surgery:

In his crate:

The toe almost 1 week post-op, right after the bandage was removed:

Be free, Mr. Stumpy, your friends have missed you! Please don't make me spend an hour chasing you down for your antibiotic shot tomorrow

:

^^Click this pic for a video^^

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
Omy god that last statement.....

 

[PeepsCA]

LOL more great pics and video

Congrats on his recovery! I'm sure he feels so much better, in all aspects (and you too!). Looks like he's gettin' around just fine, a little gimp, but I'm sure way less of one than he had with that yucky sore toe that refused to heal. I bet you will be relieved once life gets back to normal and you no longer have to catch him and give him shots!

Thanks again for sharing

 

[TexGardenGirl]

Wow, that's all so cool! Thank you for posting the pictures. I am also a former vet tech who never worked with birds, so it is fascintaing to see it on a bird! (I miss watching surgeries. I don't miss the stress of being the anesthetist when something goes wrong!) It also occurred to me while watching this that it's a pretty good demo for owners of cats or dogs as to what the steps are that their animal goes through getting prepped & recovered from any surgery (well except for taping the nostrils! - So was his tube too small for the cuff to do its job?) I guess dogs & cats will frequently also have an IV catheter, but I don't even know where you'd do that on a bird!

I was wondering - did she remove the toe at a joint, like a cat declaw, (that's what it looked like) or did she have to cut bone? I didn't see any bonecutting in the videos but thought maybe you just didn't get it recorded. I love her comment about dinosaur skin - I thought the same thing when I had to treat one of my chicken's bumblefoot - for how paper thin their normal skin is, they sure have tough foot skin. I wonder why she didn't just use tissue glue - maybe worried it wouldn't hold up outdoors? It's all I've ever seen vets use on cat declaws. [For the record before anyone says anything, I don't like declawing cats. But if you have to do it, the amputation at the joint method is the way to go as far as long term effects.] And the man's commentary in the background was pretty funny, though I bet you didn't want to hear about bugs eating his skull to see the skeleton at that particular moment. I guess all medical professionals have trouble suppressing the dark humour around owners...

Anyway, I'm glad it went well and he looks great! It was so cool to see the flock come greet him!

 

[solanaskyes]

Quote:
No, the literature she had read on avian surgery said not to inflate the cuff on the tube because it could damage the airway doing so, otherwise the tube was proper sized. The toe was removed at the joint, no bone cutting involved and she used dissolvable sutures instead of glue so it would hold up better.

I think I was the one making the "dinosaur skin" comment on the video. the man talking in the background is the owner of the hospital, another vet that also keeps guineas (we've split up a couple of orders of keets between us). He had a lot more funny stuff to say that wasn't caught on in the audio, like when we were starting "Well, I'm gonna go start the crock pot in case y'all screw this one up!" Actually, the skull comment made me go google a picture of a guinea skull when I got home, and yep, they do have a bony crest!

Anyway, Mr. Stumpy is still doing well and is back to being a normal guinea with a little bit of a gimpy gait.

 

[PeepsCA]

Glad to hear he's still doing well and there haven't been any post-amp complications, that's one tough bird.
I'd still like to see a video clip of the glitch in his giddy-up... and some close up video of the missing appendage while he's walking or running would be cool to see too! (I know, I'm not asking for much am I?

)

 

[solanaskyes]

Here's a couple videos of Stumpy. When he's just walking it's not really noticeable, although you can see he does kind of a "high stepping" thing with the foot missing a toe. When he runs or tries to cover uneven ground, he kinda bunny hops, but can still keep up with the other guineas. It will be interesting to see how much of that gets better over time: