Craziest and Most Bizarre Animal Treatments From Season 4 | The Vet Life | Animal Planet

Hello. How you doing? Good to see you. We love seeing returning clients. Kimberly's been coming here for a while now, and I've seen all of her chickens. So what we got going on today? Well, I noticed she's got a growth under her eye. It's gotten bigger. How long have you had her? A couple of months. Okay. She's fairly young. All right. What's going on? So tell me a little bit about Salem. She's a frizzle. Frizzle, yeah. Fancy girl. A frizzle is a type of hen known for the frizzle appearance of their feathers. The feathers have curls, and they also have feathers on their feet. Salem is my daughter's favorite chicken and one of my favorites. How many you have now? I know the girls. The golden girls. Thirteen. You have thirteen. You just can't have one, huh? Do you use them for their eggs? Yep. We do not have roosters. We just do hens, and we do eggs, and she's just a pet. You can't resist that. Look at that. She is cute. Yes, she is. Let's check her out. Okay. I do see here on that lower eyelid, that hard, firm nodule. You said it has gotten larger? Yes. She seems fine otherwise. She's eating. She's drinking. That's where about pox. Yeah. Pox virus. Foul pox is a virus that affects birds, and it causes lesions on the comb, on the face, and on the beak. And it can be life-threatening. A lot of people mistake that for chicken pox, but foul pox cannot be spread to humans. What I would recommend is we surgically remove it and send it out to the lab. Make sure there's A, nothing contagious, and then B, make sure there's nothing cancerous. Definitely, please. Yes. I'm concerned, so. All right. Well, we'll take good care of her. I wouldn't trust her with anybody else. Oh, thank you. Say bye-bye. Aw. Oh, birdie. Today, we're performing surgery on Salem to remove a mask that's on her eye. The box we put our birds, chickens, and ducks in, it's a homemade induction chamber. The chamber, we put patients in to mask them down so they could go to sleep. It's a risk any time you put an animal under anesthesia, however, chickens are in a class of their own. Oh, look at his little arm. All right. So, what I'm going to do is make a little wedge incision around this. How we doing? Great. Any time we're dealing with an eye, you want to be very, very precise. You have to have steady hands. Because it's a smaller surface area, you could cut too much, mess up the closure of the eye. Or if you cut the wrong way, you could actually damage the eye. Just give me a little formula jar. It's right here. There you go. We'll send that mask out for testing, okay? Mm-hmm. Now, go ahead and wake Salem up. All right. Thank you, ma'am. Come on, Salem. Wakey. Come on. Let's go see mama. I'm excited to see her. Hello. There she is. How you doing? She's doing good. Yes. How you doing? I'm Dr. Roth. How did you do? I mean, it's so clean. I can't even tell. It doesn't even look like she ever had anything there. I got lucky. You're just good. The results came back as just gray elation tissue, no signs of any cancer. Thank God. It could have been due to just trauma. Yeah. It could have been due to an insect bite. Okay. But since it did grow, it was firm. It was right on that eyelid. It's a good thing we went ahead and removed it. She's so cute, and she's so sweet. Look. She likes the scrunchies right here. That's her favorite spot. Thank you so much for taking good care of her. You're awesome. Sir, nice meeting you. Nice meeting you, sir. How you been? Good to see you. We're regulars now. We're just going to move in. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, I'll get you your antibiotics. Thanks for taking care of our babies. No problem. Aw. We have really great police officers here in the Houston area, and it's not just the humans that they protect. Hi. How are you? We got a call for service. Okay. That a turtle had a hook stuck on his throat. Dr. Osh, I have a turtle here. What we got going on here? Okay, we have received a call for service that said that she found a turtle in her backyard that had a hook in his mouth. Wow. We arrived at the location, and it was two little bitty girls that found him. They were so upset, and when we lift him up, you can see the hook. We're going to get him on some good drugs. We're going to sedate him. Once we get him sedated, kind of back that hook on out. Okay. When you're removing a hook from a turtle's mouth or his esophagus, it should be an easy fix. The sedation will relax the turtle, and all I have to do is grab the hook and basically supinate and rotate it out the way it's going in. Captain Hook will be arrested. Dr. Osh. It can take anywhere from one to two hours to sedate so we can perform the procedure to remove the hook from the mouth. Here you go, little guy. Harris County Sheriff's Department found an injured turtle with a hook in his mouth. Now that he's sedated, it's time to get it out. The turtle actually swallowed the hook. The good thing is it did not go into the stomach because if it went into the stomach, it would have been a more intensive surgery. We had to remove the shell, go in, isolate the stomach, and remove the hook from the stomach. So with this hook in the mouth, we have to worry about the turtle not eating, becoming lethargic, becoming septic because of all the bacteria. It's alive. Mm-hmm. This hook is really in there. We have to be careful. Pull on that string. Pull on it? Yeah, just pull on it real light. Pull it towards me. Pull it. Yay! Look at you. He mad now. At least he doesn't have the hook in him. You'll be happy. You all right, buddy? It was in there, too. It's probably been in there for a while. You can see the tissue here. Oh, it's dry. So what happened to it? It hooked into the movement of the esophagus. It probably just stayed there. All right. You look good. Anytime you have a place where people fish, you have the probability of something happening like either ingesting some type of plastic or some type of garbage or even getting hooked again. Captain Hook had a guardian angel. Next time, he may not have the same luck. Officer Andrews and Officer Alvarez did the right thing, and they saved a life. So I gave Officer Andrews a call to let her know that Captain Hooks is doing so much better. She says she's going to stop in a little bit later today to come pick him up. All right, y'all about ready? I'm ready. Is my turtle ready? I want my turtle. Turtle's ready. Are you going to take the turtle back to his natural habitat and release him back where you got him from? No, he's my pet now. If I take him back where he came, they're going to fish, they're going to catch him again, and he's already been through enough. It's a good thing that Officer Andrews decided to keep the turtle because if he would be released in the spot where they found him, it's a strong possibility that this could happen again. So the question, are you ready to see him? Oh, yeah. I'm ready. I've been ready. Here's Captain Hook. Look, his head's sticking out. Do you have another one at your home? A little bitty one. Okay. But the little bitty one is, like, this small, right? He's about this big. He has a friend. No, that one's eating. No, he ain't going to eat. Turtles don't eat turtles. They don't? Will they become friends? They'll be friends. He's going to be okay? He's going to be great. Now that he has a good home. How old do you think he is? If I had to guess, maybe 6. So it's going to keep getting bigger? No, this is pretty much the maximum size for this particular breed. Well, I'm excited about taking him home now. You're our hero. You took care of him. Well, if you guys need anything, don't hesitate to give me a call. Hello, I'm Dr. Ross. Hi, Theresa. Nice to meet you. How you doing, Dr. Ross? What's going on, honey? So you're here to get her stayed? Get her stayed. Okay. Is this your baby? Yes. Did you come up with the name Honey? Yes. Stop kissing me. You can clean your ears. I know, right? I bathed last night, okay? I really love kinkajous. They up all night. They have pretty eyes. They love to play. They love to climb. They're cute and cuddly. So how is Honey at home? Does she have a big cage? Does she have her own room? She has a three-story cage. And if you're by the cabinet where her bananas are, she'll climb all the way up your leg to get a banana. It says here, Honey, six months. To have a kinkajous, you have to make sure that you have time for them and make sure that you get them sterilized. Because when they become two years of age, they can become mean if they're not spayed or neutered. I don't put any outside sutures on kinkajous because they like to pick, so everything's going to be internal. Okay, great. Honey, you have a tiny pet weighing two pounds. You have to be precise when you're making your incisions and working with those tiny organs. We will shave the belly. She's going to be bald like Dr. Ross. No hair. But her hair will grow back. Want me to keep this with her? Normally, we don't keep toys, but I'm going to get rid of this for you, okay? So she can have some company when she wakes up. All right. I'll give you guys a call as soon as the procedure's done, okay? All right, thank you. You're welcome. Hi, Kiara. Yeah. We got something new here for you. We're going to do blow work. You may have to mask her down. Okay. You can put a catheter in, and we're just doing it as a routine spay. Okay. I told the owner we're going to put this in a cage with her. Aw. Love, Mickey. You got your Minnie Mouse? Yeah. Say bye-bye. Bye, honey. Bye-bye. You coming with? Yes. Come on. You ready? Hello. Here's your baby. There you go. Hi, sweet girl. Surgery went great. I gave her pain medicine before the surgery, but these are her medications start tonight. You have an opioid here, and you have some anti-inflammatories. Are you going to be in charge of giving medicine? It's easy. She'll eat it like a little treat. There you go. We have to be careful with the surgery part? Well, you know, you do have to be careful because she's going to want to move, jump, run. She doesn't know that she just had her ovaries and her uterus removed. So we want to make sure that we just be mindful. Don't let her do a lot of running, jumping, climbing, which is what they love to do. So you may have to keep her isolated to a smaller area. What I did do, you may feel or see, I put pieces of glue on her fur around her body to keep her active. Because they're very clean. They like to clean themselves. And if she sees something, they've got to distract her so she's not licking at her incision. Overall, she'll be fine. Everybody was in the back loving on her. You sure you don't want me to have her? She can be the clinic pet. We need a clinic pet. No? Okay. I have a question about her diet. All she wants to eat is bananas. We have to entice her to eat other things. So I would cut up different fruits and just leave them there. She ate pineapple. Papaya. Papaya's good because it's rough. It's roughage. And it helps kind of scale those teeth. Okay. But I'll see if I have some literature on some different things. Oh, she missed her. She missed her mommy. For the most part, she did well. You want to say bye? Bye-bye. Come on, come on. There you go. I know you're still drunk. Bye-bye. You have one last chance. You sure you don't want me to have her? All right. Well, you go ahead and take her back. There you go. Mom got some food for you. There you go. Thank you for taking care of her. Oh, no problem. If you ever need a babysitter, call me, okay? Say okay. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Bye. Hello. Hi there. How you doing? I'm good. How are you? All right. Good to see you. Yes, ma'am. So what brings you in today? So we've got this opossum that we got in a couple of weeks ago that we believe was hit by a car. It had some road rash on the feet. You know, typical signs that we see. Nikki works and volunteers for the Friends of Texas Wildlife. So she brings in all types of cool, interesting creatures. Our concern is that he has not been able to get up on his feet. Almost like maybe there's a collarbone issue. He's very friendly, so you don't have to worry about getting bit. Okay. Well, you know these guys, you know, their diet and their wallet sometimes may not be the best. Exactly. And they can develop metabolic bone disease. Yes. But with the irritation, the road rash on his paws and on his body, that could be indicative of some type of trauma. And it's named Harlequin, right? Yes, it is. Why did you name him that? Because of the variegated color on his face. Okay. Basically, it's an adjective. Harlequin is variegation. Okay. And he definitely fits that bill. We had him on pain meds for a little bit, but we just weren't really seeing a pain response with him, so we stopped doing that because we just didn't want overkill. I don't know about that. He is so friendly. He really is. He's the exception to the rule. Anytime you find an injured wildlife, you want to reach out to somebody who has experience so they can make sure they're getting taken care of the proper way. You. What was that, you? Dr. Ross. Right? Did you poop? Yeah, yeah. It's okay, Harlequin. Mr. Harley is a little bit gassy. I heard it. Yeah, yeah. How embarrassing, right? That's a normal thing. That's okay. It lets me know everything is functioning properly. This is true. He has withdrawal reflex. All I'm doing is pinching on those toes and seeing if he would actually pull back. You can see here he has good feeling and sensation. He does. These ones will come up when we scratch at him. There he goes. Oh, we like that. So we know that those are working. What a good boy. But here. But the front is the issue. It's delayed, you know. He's not paralyzed. It's just paresis. Right. So he has some feeling, some movement, but it's decreased, and we need to figure out why it's decreased. Yes. Usually when I see paresis in both forelimbs, that usually let me know it's probably a lesion along the spinal cord. Have you guys, you know, did any type of physical therapy? We have been, yes. We've been trying everything. We've got a harness that we can put him in to, you know, try to get him to move. We can do hydrotherapy with him. Do you mind if I see if he walks? Yeah. Come on, Boba. You want to move? It's just very bizarre. Let's see. Yeah. So you see how he's knuckling over? Yeah. That's called a CP deficit. A CP deficit is conscious proprioception. You put a limb in an abnormal position, it doesn't respond to the brain, and it stays in that fixed position. Usually when I see that with a decreased withdrawal reflex, that lets me know we have something probably neurological going on. Okay. Nikki from Friends of Texas Wildlife found a herd of opossum that she named Harlequin. Come on, Boba. You want to move? So she brought him in because he was unable to walk. Usually when I see that with a decreased withdrawal reflex, that lets me know we have something probably neurological going on. Okay. But you can't rule out orthopedic. Right. And it could have been an orthopedic causing a neurological from some type of trauma. Hit by a car, damaged some nerves, caused some inflammation of those nerves. Nerves didn't heal. We don't have the proper innervation causing him to have that knuckling over appearance. Okay, but let me get you off this ground. I know, Bobby. Yeah, yeah, you're going to take these x-rays. Get someone to help you. And then I'll look at them. So we want to focus on the spine and the forelimbs. So with your permission, Miss Nikki, we'll take Harlequin to the back. Yes. And we'll get some radiographs on him, and we'll let you know what we got. All right, we'll be right with you. Okie doke. Thank you. And thank you so much for being here. Anytime. You're welcome. I hope he'll be okay. He looks like he actually thinks you're his mother. He's in love with you. He's just like gazing into your eyes. He's like a little baby. He keeps looking into my eyes. He's hypnotizing. All right, let's see what we got here. Oh, look, he's so young. The bones are not as dense as it should be for a two-year-old opossum. So, yeah, yeah, if you could bring Miss Nikki back, that would be awesome. We'll kind of go over these x-rays together. So I looked at Harlequin's x-rays. You look here at the density. The bone is not as dense as it should be. Metabolic bone disease is something that we do see in this particular species. It could just be too poor nutrition before you guys got him. Well, he was emaciated when he came in, so that makes sense. We could correct this by implementing calcium. Looking here at the limbs, the limbs look really good. I don't see anything, as far as orthopedic, like broken. You can see he's actually moving those front limbs now. Yeah, he is. He does. He does. So I think, you know, better nutrition. When you're talking about adding calcium to a pet's diet, you can do that by the different vegetables, the different foods that you feed, and also you can add calcium supplements to the normal food. I'm excited that we can possibly get this turned around if it is a calcium deficiency, so that is really good news. We're going to try to make him an education animal. He'll become an ambassador. He'll go on field trips and things like that to show the public all the wonderful things about opossums. Hi there. How you doing? What's going on? How long have you had this beautiful bird? Actually, I bought him from a pet store when he was just hatched. Fed him with a syringe. How was it? Was it a lot of work? It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. He's 18 years old. 18 years. You're a teenager. And he loves to talk. How's he eating? Is he eating pretty good? He's not. He's having trouble eating. I think it's sensitive or something. I don't know, but yeah. He's not eating like he normally does. We'll trim his beak, file it down a little bit, make him easier to eat. We will go ahead and get his feathers trimmed. We'll clip his nails. Okay. All right. So I just got to get a good hole. You know what's coming, huh? The reason we'll use a towel for birds is to reduce the fear. Birds get stressed out really quick. They get anxious. And also, birds have really strong beaks. Hold them close to your chest. That also gives them something to bite on other than your fingers. I'm still your friend. The hard part's over. Clipping the wings, trimming the nails, and filing the beak, it's like a spa day. It's no different if you went to the barber shop and you go to the nail salon and get a mani-pedi. That's exactly what it is. It's just a good overall grooming visit. It's a painless procedure, but they vocalize because they don't like to be restrained. I know, you growl. Birds aren't that bad. They do a lot of talking. It's okay, Diego. It's okay. What you come up with the name? You know, there was this little kid that I used to go to school with who I had a crush on. Oh, wait, wait, hold on. How you feel about that? Well, it's new to me, but... Pretty, pretty bird. Doesn't look that bad. Birds' beaks constantly grow. They like our fingernails. But in the wild, what they do is they chew on rocks, hard forage, such as trees, limbs, nuts, that help keep those beaks filed down. Sometimes we may have to help file those beaks down to help them eat. Another thing you can do is you give them different ropes, hard chew toys, things that they can use their beak to kind of help file them down naturally. That's it. Oh, yeah, he's pretty pissed. I'm gonna give you back tomorrow. There you go. I'm not pissed for what? Your beak all shiny for the ladies. You good. That's it. Say bye-bye. He's like, ah, I'm not messing with you, Dr. Ross. I ain't falling for that one. Thank you guys so much. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Have fun. Hello. How's it going, Kimberly? How's it going? Good, how are you? Hi. How you doing? Good, how are you? How's it going? Jim and Kelly, what they do is rescue these wildlife animals. They rehabilitate them. I first met Tuff a long time ago when he was just a baby. I'm talking about I could hold Tuff in my arms. You brought him here today for? A wellness. Okay. Mainly just to make sure, but he's also been getting these spots on his tail. They seem to be cleared up right now, but it's, they're like perfectly round. Have you noticed any fleas or any type? No, but I noticed he'll lose his hair in that spot. So when you feed him, you got to look in their eyes. What y'all doing? I wanted to come see him. That's how I remember when he was little. Does he eat fruit? He does. We do apples, pears, lettuce. He likes the banana peels, but not the bananas themselves. I'm out. I got to go. Good to see you guys. You too. See the spots you're talking about? Yeah. Go get the black light. I'm going to check it for ringworm. All right. So I'm going to lift his tail. Yeah, yeah, if you could just shine it up for us. It is something like pink on here. I don't know if that's just irritation. Well, the good thing is it did not fluoresce with the black light, which would have made it positive for ringworm. It is not. If he's using the bottom of his tail as a foot, and he's using it to scoot around on hard surfaces, it will possibly have those lesions. Okay. Because that is right where the bend is. Okay. So it could just be callus. No different than if we were working in the yard or we were lifting weights. You know how you have those callus on your hands? Yeah. So that could be from what that's from, just callus formation. Who is this guy here? This is Gizmo. Gizmo, you said this is a new addition? Yes. Okay. He's about a year old. Okay. We had him since he was three weeks old. We bottle raised him. He was so tiny when we got him, we weren't sure he was going to make it. These are wild animals that we have in captivity, but they still have the drive and the natural ability to be a wild animal. Right. Let's get on the table. Why don't you bite me? What are you doing? It's okay. Here, let me do it. Yeah, because if you hold him too tight, he gets... Yeah, he gets it. Yeah, he gets freaked out. Oh, yeah. He has two testicles, so that's good. I'm just feeling his tail, making sure we don't have any lesions or anything. Oh, that's a cute picture. Mommy, protect me. He looks good. His eyes, overall, he looks good. So within the next year, I would recommend getting him neutered. Okay. Who's the next pet we have? This is Blinky. Blinky. Yeah, Kinkachu. And you notice that he's having issues with his... His back feet, he's getting sores on them, but then they look a little better today, but over the weekend, they were like, the skin is just peeling off. So looking at where these lesions are, they're kind of like on the bony prominence. Okay. Like on his heel. Yeah. On the latter aspect of his paw. So it could be the enclosure. Okay. Especially, you know, the guys are real active. Yeah. They're moving, they're jumping, they're running. We see it a lot in guinea pigs, rabbits, it's called bumblefoot. Okay. Where the bottom of the foot pad becomes irritated due to hard surfaces. But it doesn't look or appear to be infected. Okay. You can imagine when he's jumping, he's probably pushing off. Okay. And then that metal grate at the bottom, it's just causing friction, causing irritation. The only thing I would recommend doing is... Yeah. You could get like a vitamin E capsule and just put vitamin E on it. That'll help out a lot. I think you're doing a really good job with all your pets. Oh! He has hots. Is he licking my hair? Yeah, he likes bald heads. Wait. What are you doing? You want to go say hi to Dr. Blue? Let's go say hi. What's up, man? Come on over here. Get over there, man. What's up? Come here. There you go. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. If y'all ever need anything, please don't hesitate to give us a call.