Chickens!

Well, the day started out quite unusually. I met up with Mike at 7 to go out and take trachael swabs on 10 chickens for a health paper to Texas. Yep. We have a client who trucks chickens down to Texas for slaughter. Quite a lot of milage on those birds! Wouldn't you think they could find closer chickens? Not sure of the whole story but he sells them to an asian market because they like dark meat better. These chickens look like Rhode Island Reds and are 14 weeks old. The roosters have beautiful combs on them - ours always got frostbite and turned black. These guys are in a heated barn so they don't have that problem.



Well, with the bird flu making it's appearance in Minnesota the last two weeks, Texas is very careful to not bring contaminated birds into their state. The birds have to be tested for the flu no more than 72 hours before they enter Texas. I'm sure each state has it's own requirements but they are usually pretty close to each other. Anyway, Mike has to inspect these chickens every time a shipment goes to Texas. He usually take blood samples from 30 birds and the samples are sent to Winona. This time, because of the flu outbreak,Mike decided to take trachael swabs from only 10 birds. The owner would have to drive the samples up to theVeterinary Diagnostic Lab at the University of Minnesota so they could perform the testing. The owner wants to leave with the chickens tomorrow morning! So time is of the essense - hence the 7 am call.
This owner is shipping 10,000 birds but luckily he has picked 10 chickens out and put them in crates for us outside the building. It seems he has coffee with his buds every day from 7 to 9 without fail - also the reason Mike was asking a tech along to help.

Actually having the birds in the crate was a huge help. They can only lay down and are pretty packed so it took me no time at all to pull out one bird at a time for Mike. After I grabbed the bird, I held his (or hers) feet with my left hand while my right hand held up his chest and helped straighten his neck for Mike.



Once Mike had taken a swab, he dipped it into a test tube filled with formaldehyde.

We did 5 swabs per tube. The chickens went into the empty crate one by one as they were sampled and then back to the clinic we went. I helped fill out the paper work and waited for the owner to finish his coffee and come pick up his samples.

That was something new for me. After that ( 7:40) it was the normal vaccines, shipping, helping with patients and clients. Here's a sample of urine though that has stones in it. The dog, Muffy, a cute shih tzu, tolerated  her bladdr being squeezed periodically. It seems with a little additional outisde pressure, she could push the stones out herself. Often these have to be surgically removed! Muffy will be placed on a special diet to help dissolve the crystals and also antibiotics since she has some blood from the irritation.

It was a long day filled with vaccine orders, non-stop phone calls, cleaning, helping.... and surgery day tomorrow. 

Better go rest up! There's a horse cryptorchid surgery tomorrow!