Endangered Carnaby’s cockatoo
treated by vets at Perth Zoo after it was badly burnt on a power line
Calla Wahlquist
Friday 7 April 2017
03.26 BST Last modified on Friday 7 April 2017 04.22 BST
Vets at Perth zoo have
used matchsticks and glue to replace the flight feathers of a Carnaby’s
cockatoo which was badly injured after it was burned on a power line.
Using a syringe to coat the donor
feathers with superglue and a matchstick to shape the quill, vets replaced the
juvenile bird’s feathers and cut away the burnt remains in an effort to help it
fly again.
The bird, which is an endangered
species, was taken to the zoo’s vet hospital late last month. After a week
recuperating and gaining weight, it was deemed fit enough to undergo surgery on
Monday.
“This little guy was unfortunately burned when
the bird sitting next to him exploded on power lines, so we needed to replace
his feathers,” said a vet, Peter Ricci. “He’s faring quite well, he is a young
bird so he is eating quite well and he’s begging for food so he has made some
great improvements so far.
“Just to think, that poor little
baby would have been sitting on that power line next to his mum or his dad and
that bird unfortunately has gone up in flames and passed away as well,” he
said.
The procedure to replace the
feathers is called “imping”, something Ricci said was fairly common on domestic
birds whose wings had been trimmed too short, and on wild birds of prey with
damaged flight feathers.
“It’s a pretty basic procedure,”
he said. “We use pretty basic tools – just matchsticks and superglue, really.
The trick is to get the right feather in the right place and the right angles
before the glue dries so there’s a little bit of tricky work to getting the
features in place but it’s not rocket science overall.”
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