US vet uses cod skin to save bald eagle in time for Fourth of July | Wisconsin
A veterinarian saved the life of a seriously injured white pygargue using a pioneering fish skin grafting procedure more commonly used for human injury, relaxing the bird in nature in a symbolic act before the July 4 holidays.
The adult Raptor named Kere was found by a visitor to the park in Hayward, Wisconsin, in August, with one of his legs open from the knee to the ankle of an unknown injury and appearing seriously in weight insufficiency.
With a deep infection already installed and no healthy skin with which to work, Dr. Kimberly Ammann, founder and chief of the veterinarian of Winged Freedom Raptor Hospital of Spooner, said that she initially thought that euthanasia was the only option.
But the claws of the bird still worked, and Ammann remembered having learned the potential of the skin transplant procedures from his veterinary training.
“I thought that if I could make him heal, she could survive, because her toes worked, her foot was working,” she said.
A Google research has led him to Kerecis, a company based in Iceland which advanced the use of the skin of the Atlantic cod for human transplants with advanced or difficult injuries, but which had never been invited before to help with a bird of prey.
Kerecis sent sterilized, dehydrated and offset fish skin plots, and with the help of technical advice from the company, Ammann began to work on the leg of the eagle.
She said that the patch had taken well, and with follow -up procedures to add a fragmented fish skin to fill the gaps and promote the regeneration of the tissues, Kere – which was appointed by Amman and her staff to honor business support – quickly improved during a 10 -month rehabilitation period.
“The only reason it worked is because she was such a good patient,” said Ammann, who treated 75 injured or sick white pygargues in her hospital last year.
“She insisted on looking at everything I did. I couldn’t put a hood or a towel on her. Her wings were retained but she never resisted and was so tolerant at all the time it had taken. She was stuck in an interior room to keep it clean, no water, no bath and we had to keep a bandage on time. It was incredible.”
Ammann said that it was an emotional day when Kere was finally released on June 22, but that she cried more during the final exam when she determined that the injury of the eagle was sufficiently healed.
“I lying it down to have a last photo, and I realized that I was never going to touch this bird again, I would never have my hands on it again, and that made me,” she said.
“Even if I am their doctor and you keep all this objectivity and everything, I am emotionally attached to these birds, each of them, and this one was very special.”
The liberation of Kere, looked at by a hundred people, including hospital staff, volunteers and workers in the Wisconsin natural resources department, performed in the midst of the preparations for the Independence Festival, which, in Ammann, was appropriate given the importance of white -headed pygarma as a symbol of American freedom.
“I am so excited for her,” she said.
“She can choose where she wants to go, which lake she wants to sit, where she is going to fish. She has all the freedom to make these choices now, and what better time to be able to do that on July 4? ”
