boxofdelights: (Default)
[personal profile] boxofdelights
The saddest turkey vulture I have ever seen came in to the raptor center last week. They tried twice to do a blood test for lead poisoning, but the machine just said ERROR. So they took another sample and sent it over to CSU. Their machine said, even for a turkey vulture, that is a lethal lead level. For a bald eagle, 0.2 ppm of lead in the blood is toxic, 1 ppm is lethal. Turkey vultures are tougher, but this bird's blood had 11.8 ppm of lead.

For lead poisoning, we do chelation. It takes I think seven weeks. For a level that high, we're definitely going to have to do it more than once. While that's going on, we have to try to keep the bird's organs from shutting down.

As long as the bird keeps telling us I ATEN'T DEAD YET we'll keep working.

Date: 2017-04-14 07:12 am (UTC)
lilysea: Tree hugger (Tree hugger)
From: [personal profile] lilysea
That sounds emotionally hard! :(

You people are doing good work! ^_^ <3

Date: 2017-04-14 10:54 am (UTC)
muninnhuginn: (Default)
From: [personal profile] muninnhuginn
I do hope it pulls through: such lovely birds.

Date: 2017-04-14 12:37 pm (UTC)
loligo: Scully with blue glasses (Default)
From: [personal profile] loligo
Good luck! A little town next door to us has a Vulture Festival each year during their migration season. When I lived in Michigan, vultures were a rare sighting, but they are everywhere around here and I will regularly pass flocks of 5-10 of them eating roadkill along the highway on my way to work.

Date: 2017-04-14 12:48 pm (UTC)
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
From: [personal profile] twistedchick
I hope that your vulture pulls through this and isn't so distressed that it starts barfing its food (which they do when they feel upset or threatened.) Where it's being treated, it's probably getting something like wet dog food, right? Has to be on an equivalent level with gourmet roadkill.

*thinking good thoughts for a large feathered dinosaur descendant*
Edited Date: 2017-04-14 12:49 pm (UTC)

Date: 2017-04-14 04:14 pm (UTC)
replyhazy: (pianobiter)
From: [personal profile] replyhazy
Poor bird. Good luck.

Date: 2017-04-14 08:06 pm (UTC)
jesse_the_k: harbor seal's head captioned "seal of approval" (Approval)
From: [personal profile] jesse_the_k
Thanks for helping a vulture out

(For reasons unknown to me, I live near a t.v. Vortex. It's common to look out my front door and see 3 to 6 of them cruising overhead in wide ovals.)

Date: 2017-04-14 08:53 pm (UTC)
seascribble: the view of boba fett's codpiece and smoking blaster from if you were on the ground (Default)
From: [personal profile] seascribble
I am only familiar with lead levels in toddlers (for obvious job related reasons). How does a bird get such a high lead level? Through eating lots of dead rodents who've ingested it? I hope he pulls through.

Date: 2017-04-16 02:34 pm (UTC)
seascribble: the view of boba fett's codpiece and smoking blaster from if you were on the ground (Default)
From: [personal profile] seascribble
Oh. That seems like the kind of thing that would be easily preventable. :(

Date: 2017-04-14 10:42 pm (UTC)
brigantine: (ray dragonslayer)
From: [personal profile] brigantine
Poor vultchy! We get a lot of them soaring around here, checking out the beach for dead fish. I hope your efforts at restoration will triumph!

Where on earth would the poor dude/dudette get so much lead, anyway? Maybe eating something that had buckshot in it? :P

Date: 2017-04-15 03:33 am (UTC)
eeyorerin: (Default)
From: [personal profile] eeyorerin
Oh, birdpal. Hang in there, buddy.

Date: 2017-04-16 01:16 am (UTC)
sasha_feather: Retro-style poster of skier on pluto.   (Default)
From: [personal profile] sasha_feather
Wow!

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