Welcome to the webinar as part of the 2021 Colum vet conference. Because zoo, wild animals and non-domestic pet animals have to be restrained for use to perform medical procedures, kind of developed this presentation that's gonna focus on the chemical restraint of captive and wild animals strategies, commonly used drugs and equipment. So interestingly, whenever we think of chemical restraint, the first thing that people think about our friends and colleagues, they all think about Day.
And although this is certainly a very important Aspect of our work, it's really a very small part of it. So why do wild or captive animals need to be restrained? For example, This was 2 years ago when I was in Tanzania.
This was at the Serengeti wildlife area, and we were teaching students from Tanzania how to immobilise wild animals. So here we are doing a zebra. So this was for teaching purposes, but we were performing a health examination at the time.
So anyway, what's some of the reasons? Well, first, for health examinations, or if there's medical issues, for example, if we have to move animals to other facilities, if we have quarantine and pre-shipment exams, etc. So there's lots of needs.
So we strain to anaesthesia are important components of zoological medicine, and these are really essential components of most preventive medicine programmes, and preventive medicine is certainly one of the big advances in zoological medicine over the past 30 or 35 years. People have found that similar principles and techniques used in domestic animals can often be applied to exotics, so we have learned a lot from our domestic veterinarians. But in zoological medicine, it requires familiarity with mobilising agents and in particular equipment.
So let's discuss some kind of pre-restrained considerations. We always have to ask ourselves the following questions before we initiate any immobilisation procedure. Is your restraint technique, is it safe for the the handler?
And that's first and foremost, of course. Then we have to consider animal safety. And to do that, we have to consider the animal's physical condition, for example.
We have to consider their stress level. Then we have to consider the, you know, environmental conditions, moats, electric fences, for example, maybe for trees and cliffs, areas that that an animal can get injured on. We have to also have to consider extreme temperatures, especially when it's especially hot.
That can be a problem. And then, you know, personal preference and familiarity. So we were talking about stress, any form of, of restraint can have an enormous amount of stress or impact on animals.
So all these factors we really have to consider together before we decide that we're going to actually restraining them. So other questions to ask yourself before you initiate an immobilisation. Procedure is first, can the intended procedure be accomplished, OK?
And if you think maybe it can't be, then you should probably reconsider, either redo it or don't do it at all. Secondly, can the animal be observed during recovery, which that's very important, especially in the wild. And then finally, is it, is it worth the risk?
Because eventually you're gonna have injuries, you are gonna have losses, so you have to be aware of that as well. For example, this is a a urrial sheep in one of our local zoos, as you can see. If you haven't worked with urel sheep, I'll let you know, they are extremely and easily stressed, very, very fast, and, and it's just very challenging.
So again, it's gonna really depend on the species. So all captive and immobilisation procedures requires thorough planning. So when I came to Kansas State.
In 1990 to start this programme, one of the first things I did was to develop a, a, a checklist, for example. I also developed, started sort of a model for a service, and it is plan, plan, plan, and then be flexible, OK? Because no matter how well you plan it, it never tends to go exactly the way you.
We also want to make sure that everything is done in one exam if possible. So that is also very important. So you look at some of the animals we're working on here.
This is the tiger that was darted. This is a giraffe at another facility and and and a and a rhino. So these are all major major procedures.
So I started a checkoff list. And why did I do that? Because I think it's really important that we plan all procedures and we plan them in detail.
And this has been quite successful here. I've trained 43 interns and residents, and from what I understand, many of them are still using these type of check checklist. It includes responsibilities of each person, anticipated procedures.
It has what ifs, for example, I mean, whenever you're planning something, you and your students and your colleagues should maybe what if, what happens if the animal gets too hot? What happens if the animal has seizures? We also want you to, to plan, and calculate all the emergency drugs, so they are done in advance.
And just remember that time is is critical for these animals down. So, you certainly don't wanna overly speed it up. You don't want to rush it, so to speak, but you don't wanna wanna go particularly slow.
You want to go at a good constant pace and try to get the animal. Evaluated and and up as soon as possible. So what does this checklist look like?
Well this, I just pulled one out from our from our stack here cause we do one every few weeks. And this is one on on our Malayan tiger and so what we have is we have sort of a signal a little bit more information than that, you know, . So everyone has the has the same information.
We put a little bit of history here as you can see, and it's just really what is pertinent for that procedure, and this one, for example, did have some renal issues previously. Then we decide, well, what are we gonna use for sedative if we're gonna use one, and we always do in this particular case, it was gonna be oral diazepam. And then we come up with our immobilising drugs.
With the dosages, all these have dosages, it has the, the concentration of the drug that we're using as well. And then we can, we can continue down and here we can come up with our reversal agents because we would certainly like to reverse this procedure as soon as possible when it's done or if we're having an emergency. So in this particular case, we're, you know, using our knockdown drugs, the metatoninine ketamine, and we're reversing with apamazole and fluid.
And then we have monitoring. So we wanna make sure we have a list of, of power monitoring and to make sure we have all the equipment there. And then for the physical examination, you can write down whatever you, you want, of course.
We're trying to, generally identify those areas that we're really trying to emphasise, maybe it's pulmonary, maybe it's oral, but you still want to do a complete examination for most of these animals. You probably don't examine it once a year and maybe not even that. So you wanna make sure that that you're doing a complete and thorough physical examination.
Again, you're gonna have a team there and certain people will do the anaesthesia, certain people will be doing the physical exam, maybe the dentistry, whatever is required. You wanna make a list of specimens that you're gonna collect. You know, here we're collecting blood for various procedures including for canine distemper tier, for example.
And the reason this is important is because you don't want to forget something. You don't want to just discuss it at a meeting, then all of a sudden you're immobilising without any lists, and then you get through and you realise, oh, we didn't collect that, we didn't do this. So you make sure it's all done and then you have this checked off.
And when you get through, you look at the list and make sure everything is checked off, so we haven't forgotten. And that also goes for the treatments as well. So this is the list of treatments that we're doing in this particular case, we're doing radiographs as well as all these other vaccinations.
And then if you're gonna do fluids, and we always do if they're anaesthetized, they may not need fluids, but it was, it's always gives them a boost, and then we'll calculate how much we're gonna get. So again, make sure everything is checked off, because again, you may not have the opportunity to evaluate that animal for a period of time, because it is very costly and it's there's some risk involved as well. So what is the ideal restraint drug?
Well, first of all, you have to understand none exists. There's no ideal restraint drug, but there are some properties that are very important to acknowledge. And so if we had the idea of restrained drug, it would be one that's very high therapeutic index.
So what does that mean? Well, that's the lethal dose, you know, divided by effective dose. And the higher the therapeutic index, the safer it is, and it's really even higher in drug combinations because you're using less of each drug and when you have your, your, your cocktails, so to speak.
So safety is really very important, especially because in most cases, in many cases you don't know what the animal weighs until it's immobilised. Almost all the time when we are immobilising agents, immobilising animals, we're using agents in combination. So we have to make sure that the ideal drug is compatible with other drugs.
And then make sure that the drug can be administered IM but also can do IV or however it hits it hits an animal, but obviously IM is what we're trying to do. We want a short induction period, as you can see. We want a smooth onset of action.
Really important. You want to decrease their running, their excitement, all these activities, especially, you know, in the wild, so they don't go far. A smooth onset.
And and very effective and small volume, so you want something that is potent. Well, what are some of the other characteristics you want to look at? Well, you'd like to have minimal, really, ideally no, but minimal cardiovascular or respiratory effects.
Analgesic at the sub-anesthetic levels. Safe for pregnant animals but why is that because in many cases you don't know if an animal is pregnant or not. Safe for humans, you may have accidental exposure.
And reversible. You should always have an anecdote, and why is that? Well, first, you might have an overdose.
You may do what you thought was an appropriate weight, but the animal weighs much less than that. Secondly, you may have actual and medical emergency. That you want to reverse.
And thirdly, you just want to kind of reduce their time of recovery. So if you're through with the procedure, you're all ready to go, you'd like to get them up as soon as possible. This is really especially important, you know, when you're, you're in the wild and an animal may be acting very abnormal for a period of time after the reversal.
So you want something that's really quick acting in terms of being. There's other features as well. Ideally, one would be very economical and affordable.
And also one that has solution stability, because that's important because you may be out. I was in Serengeti where it can be very hot and you're walking around with a drug in your, in your gun, and you want to make sure that it stays stable at this high temperature. So drugs commonly used in the chemical immobilisation of wild animals include our sedatives.
Our knockdown drugs and and these are generally given all in combination. And ideally if possible gas anaesthesia. Now, you're not gonna use gas anaesthesia in, in some of the wildlife scenarios.
It depends where you're at and when we were in Africa on both times, South Africa and Tanzania, we did not have any gas anaesthesia. But, Other procedures and other biologists, veterinarians in the wild might actually have some portable machines depending on what they're doing. So let's talk about some of the sedatives, the alpha 2, and, adrenalceptor agonist.
We'll talk about that, benzodiazepines, aromasine is a phenopiazine. This is one I, I really seldom use, but I, whenever I've given talks to, to Latin America, many of them have used it and they use it very successfully. So it's just personal preference.
I think it's probably a fine drug. The alpha 2 again, the ones that are most commonly used metatomaine. Well, that's now off market in North America, unfortunately, but we can still get it in when it's compounded, and this is the way we use it anyway in medicine because we get it in a concentrated form.
When it was commercially made, it was 1 milligramme per millimetre, and we had it compounded at several places at either 10 mg per mL or 20. So you have a very small volume with a very high concentration of a very effective drug. So this has been excellent.
Dex meatomidine has has kind of commercially replaced that at the lower dose. The toadine, has certainly been used among the perissodactylis, for example, I used it in in in rhinos, xylazine, comes at several, concentrations. And then you want reversal, so the, the antagonists for these drugs and usually specific are Yohemb atoppamazole which we use for meattonine and telazoline commonly used in in ruminant.
Also some other characteristics to include is for these is that first, these drugs are are not controlled, so, you know, they're non-narcotic, non-narcotic easier to get and again they can be administered IM such you or or IV. Some other characteristics, these are frequently used with and compatible with other drugs. They have a sedative effects, analgesic and muscle relaxant.
You may get bradycardia. It's important to notice here. That You you can you can get hypotension.
OK, over time, but initially, at least in many species we found, you get hypertension, and oftentimes it's, it's extensively increasing in in blood, blood pressure. So we typically reduce half. Of our alvas, which is basically concentrated metoidine, we, we usually use half of it once the animal stabilised intubated or, or we have where we want, and, and that then takes care of the, of the, hypertension.
With these drugs, if that's all you're using, you may respond to to stimuli, so you have to be very aware of that and be careful. Immobilisation, sedation of highly excited animals may be prolonged or may not occur if this is your primary drug that you're using. Anyway, you want to be careful with these and make sure you use them in combination with other drugs.
Benzodiazepines. Now this is a, you know, another sedative, very important, commonly used. We use midazolam.
Most of the time, because this can be given I am in our darts or. And syringe, however, Diazepam will be used in some species, and in this way always used orally. Because diazepam is, it's, it's oil-based, it's not compatible with the other drugs that you're using, and it's also slower absorbed, .
If if it never went on. Clonazepam is something we've been using for about 8 years. And this is an oral dissolving tablet.
It's especially good in primates, but we use in some other species. We don't use it in big cats, at least from our somewhat limited experience, we found we had prolonged recovery in the big cats, so we, we just use diazepam for that. With the benzodiazepines, we have good muscle relaxation.
It's an anti-convulsant, so it's especially of value when you're using drugs like ketamine. And we said that dietpan was poorly absorbed by reversal is fluainil. It's Expensive drug, but it's effective and so all of our immobilizations, we will add that to a reversal cocktail.
So ketamine, ketamine is a non-barbiturate dissociative anaesthetic we use it, but almost are probably all of our protocols, been used a long time. It's as at some analgesic hardly somatic, . Value, it generally lacks cardiopulmonary effects, minimal respiratory effects.
And it's wide therapeutic index. It is very safe, and this was, this has been used in humans for a number of years, especially kids, up until through the 80s. Ketamine can be biopolized, so that means you can, you know, you can buy a bottle of this and then you can have it biopolized and then add fluid back to it at half the volume.
So you're getting like twice the concentration. So oftentimes when we use it for the big animals, we're using it at 200 megs per meal. So this would reduces the volume, which is really very good.
Ketamine does have some side effects as, as you all know, cause I'm sure you all use this drug. It can be painful, I am. There's kind of poor muscle relaxation actually have rigidity, when it's when it's used alone.
It can result in convulsions, especially in feel again when it's used alone. And the rough inductions and recoveries at higher doses. There's no reversal, in, in, and the recovery again and, can be as we said.
So I'm gonna try this, see if this works, and it does work. So, so this is a tiger that was given only ketamine. This was in Thailand, so it was not here.
This is in Thailand when my student was participating and visiting. She was a veterinary student and she got this for us, but you can see this is only ketamine, and that was the effect that you have. So a severe seizure.
Now we're gonna talk about Tlazol, which is tidomy and zoazepam. This was available since the 1970s. I don't use it much now.
I think it's a good drug. It has lots of advantages, but I use it a lot in the 80s and, and, and into the 90s. It's a dissociative anaesthetic and tranquillizer combination.
Similar to ketamine midazolam. It's as you can see here, it's safe and effective in many exotic and wild species because it's been used for so many years. It does have kind of a short half-life once it's prepared, but it has a rapid onset and it requires a small body.
So it is handy, so you. Now, when you administer it, it may be painful, and it may have some other side effects. You can have a prolonged recovery.
I can have respiratory depression in some species. They may even be apic initially. Some involuntary muscle twitching can occur.
Some muscle rigidity, and they may have hyper or hypotension depending on the species, and, and the concentration you're using, and there's no reversal for, for thalidomy. Again, thalidomine is, is like, like the ketamine. So People have always questioned is this contraindicated in tigers because there were a number of reports years ago about tigers dying and not necessarily at the time, but maybe a day or so later.
There's been another paper written since then. Who said that may not always be the case, possibly it's related maybe to dose or something like that, but I've talked to some colleagues and who have had some issues. So even if it's not as significant as we thought it was, I prefer meatomidine and midazolam anyway, as a combination.
So meatomidine, meth midazolam, and ketamine are my go to for most and so, most of the larger homes, and it's, it's a really a good combination. Metatoinine I have concentrated, ketamine I have concentrated, and midazamine with midazolam is a is a excellent. How about opioids?
Well, opioids are the most potent immobilising drugs that are available, and, and a lot of the opioids have been used since the 1960s. They have specific antagonists. And, you know, although they're classified as anaesthetics, they actually induce immobilisation as opposed to anaesthesia.
So the animal, you know, can still respond to stimulation and it certainly does not induce surgical anaesthesia. So the opioids again include the most potent of the immobilisation. And there are several opioid receptors depending on the species as well, the kappa and delta and U.
So what are some of these opioids? Well, the torphine, and we'll talk about them separately, but that's in 99 bio fentanyl. Carfentanil, which is no longer commercially available in North America, but I understand that it still may be available in parts of the world.
I think they had some still in Africa. Borinil Now beorphenol is certainly not one of the ultra potents at all, but we have used it in some species, and it's been very effective. It's, it's part of the cocktail using the small grounds, but it has a, you know, a high therapeutic index so it's safe, it's not highly controlled, relatively easy to get.
Provides only mild sedation, it's good has some good analgesia. Again, it's, it's always used in combination with other drugs. And this is a rhino.
It's immobilised. So what are some of the ultra potent opioids, so that includesphine, bifentanyl, and. So these are all extremely potent, they're dangerous to handle.
But they can be used in very small volumes. And cause respiratory depression. One advantage again, they are reversible.
And they're good for remote capture of large ms. This one that was started . So what are some of the advantages of phine and carfentanil?
Well, first again, they are potent, require very small volume. So if they can fit into a dart or remote capture of large animals, that's that's really what you want, so that's that's a good characteristic. They're rapidly antagonised, so rapidly reversed.
Provides some, you know, analgesia. And no significant cardiovascular effects, but hypertension may occur in brains and and elephants. Some disadvantages, they're toxic to humans at low doses.
Secondly, they can be significant respiratory depressants. They can recycle after antagonism. What what does that mean?
Well, you can reverse it, the animal can get up, and then hours later or the next day, they can be staggering or showing some clinical signs of of of a drug, and that's called recycling. And why is that? Because the reversal agent that you use is shorter acting than the drug that was used to mobilise it.
They can also cause a prolonged excitatory state prior to induction. And alter the thermal regulation. The animals can respond to stimulation, so you do want to be careful around them.
And for muscle relax relaxation in some space. So again, carfentanil is no longer commercially available in North America and probably in other parts of the world. I fentanyl, which I think is a is an improvement over carfentanil anyway.
It's also called A 3080 was developed in South Africa. It's an ultra potent opioid and like the others, like the tourphine and carfentanil, it's a Schedule 2 drug. It has similar effects to the other opioids, similar anaesthetic characteristics as the other opioids, but generally decrease blood pressure and respiration.
So it's commonly used in Africa and I was, I did work there in both Tanzania and in South Africa, and this was a, a go to drug that was used very common for the, for the big, big, big herbivores primarily. Advantages, well, it's very short induction period, which is good and museums cannot go very far, especially in the wild and there . Started and again the same combination with other drugs, a wide therapeutic index, so that that's also a plus, .
They said better respiration effects than most other opioids, very short half-life, which is good and Seldom or no green organisation, so that is really good. So it is really my opinion our superior. You also have reversal agents for the opioids, naloxone, this is the only one that's approved in North America.
Naltrexone is the one that's preferred, and why is that? Because naltrexone has a longer life span. So it, it, it, it lasts longer in the animal with naloxone is shorter and that and with that, you can get the, the recycling or reorganisation of some drugs like carpentanil.
And a diperorphine, which is pretty specific for a toy, and in this case it's a zebra that was immobilised. So, immobilisation drugs are almost always used in combination. We always use.
It reduces the doses of all the drugs, it reduces the drug volume in most cases. And what else? Well, it reduces undesirable side effects.
It also increases the induction time so the animal will go down faster and it also improves the quality and the speed of recovery after the reverse. So how do we maintain the anaesthesia? Well, I mean, ideally, you have gas available, certainly for prolonged procedures.
We use ISO and most people do. Some people have used C but it's kind of expensive. But there are some areas, especially in the wild, that maybe you don't have access to gas anaesthesia.
When we worked in both South Africa and Tanzania, we did not have gas available at all. So, but even nasal installation, can, can be useful for, most anaesthetized animals, so they will benefit from supplemental oxygen and carry that. Obviously in the real large animals may have limited value, but still.
Has some value in in many of the species. Again, gas is frequently not available for use in many animals in the field depending on the work that you're doing. So what do we use now for, you know, drug delivery equipment?
We know, you know, about the drugs that are being used and, and all that. Well, what, what equipment is available? Well the hand syringe, obviously we're aware of.
Most common, or it's very common. Most familiar with pole syringes, blow pipes or blowguns, compressed air guns. Pistols and rifles, and we'll talk about each of them.
Now this is kind of cool. So when I was in Tanzania, working in the Serengeti with the wildlife vets 2 years ago, I saw this brown box up there. It was really cool, dark box.
Oh, and I asked if I could look at it. They said, sure, so I took it down and I opened it up. And look at this thing, it was amazing.
It is a crossbow. So some of you may not know, crossbows were used, probably in 20s, maybe 30s, maybe earlier, I don't know. And I've read about them.
I knew they were used. I never saw one. Well, here's one that they had.
Still in good shape. Pretty amazing. So the hand syringe, that's something that we're all very familiar with, of course, it's low cost, you use a short, large board needle.
Small syringes, usually 3 to 10 ccs, a lure lock syringes, ideally, so the needle won't come off with pressure. Has a high degree of accuracy if you have to do it by hand, but with that, it also has some disadvantages. What is that?
Well, first, you have to have close proximity. And therefore, you often, you know, requires physical restraint of some sort, maybe, maybe a squeeze cage. And there's certainly, you know, a great potential for human injury depending on the species.
And then we go on to a pole syringe, and this is basically a a syringe on the end of a pole, continued pressure is needed, so sometimes you end up with a partial notes and maybe that's enough for a start. It's inexpensive, it's quiet, it's especially in value when you're, we have a trapped animal or a caged animal. So this is, I have a lot of equipment and this is just one of them, so this is an example of them.
Of a full syringe. This is all different lengths, so I can make this really quite long if I want, and it also comes with different sizes for syringes. So we have 3 different syringe sizes that you can use here for this as well.
So this is, this is very useful, and Obviously, you have to use pressure to do it. It's also useful in giving additional drugs to animals and not completely immobilised, but are approachable. For example, here I am, using a pole syringe on a grizzly bear now obviously made sure that he was down for the count, so to speak.
But he was not down enough to we we we we could work with him or you can get really close to him. So when you do this, you always wanna make sure you have an exit and hopefully you have something that's not very fast and it's really pretty well down. The pulse ranges are usually limited to about, you know, less than 10 millilitres of a drug.
But we also have one that's commercially made that spring load. These are really, you know, pretty expensive. And they can cause a lot of muscle pain, I think, and damage because it goes in instantly.
But it is fast, it may be useful in some circumstances. So again, when you're using the whole syringes, sometimes it takes good luck. It may look simple in this case, it is pretty simple.
If you have an animal that is up, even between bars, let's say the herbivore, or you're out there with them. And it, it takes your pressure. So once you the needle goes in, they're they're beginning to run or move and you have to like stay with them until all that drug is in.
So it's not as easy as as as you might. And then we go to what we use, you know, probably more commonly, the remote drug delivery systems. This is a major advancement in wildlife medicine, certainly far superior to the crossbow.
It allows the administration of immobilisation agents, vaccine, antibiotics, even, without the need for physical restraint. It's safer for us because we're not nearly. It's less stressful for the animals as well.
Because they oftentimes don't know, you know exactly what we're doing. So the common systems include like the the first thing the blowpipe, and secondly, compression air gun, 3, the pistol and 4, right. And this is a camel, and you can say this is darted here and in a weird way.
And so the type of equipment you're gonna use is gonna depend on the animal, the distance and the volume of the drug that that you need. So what are some of the advantages of remote drug delivery systems? First, specific animals can be targeted, so it's not masses of animals that you're having give given the water or you feed to try to immobilise them or something.
You can go just for one specific animal. Secondly, the drugs can be administered based on body weight, although you're obviously in most cases estimated, but at least that's a reasonably good start, especially with experience. You can deliver a range of volumes.
And you can treat and or you can even marketing. So individually. It has some disadvantages.
Some systems are somewhat, loud. They can be complex. And it requires a training and experience.
Also, the accuracy of the will vary depend on the size of the animal, the distance, and it's certainly possible to have injury or death, depending on where the the dart ends up. Smaller animals, you may be, you know, have some chance possibly of breaking a leg or or or or something like that. But in general, with experience, caution, this is a very good technique and one that we use most commonly.
For all the So the blowpipes, you know, it's been, they've been used for like thousands of years and You know, South America and Africa. These are darts that are propelled through a tube by rapid expulsion of one's breath, and they are quiet. Results in a minimal trauma on impact.
Especially good for small animals at reasonably close range. But it does take a lot of experience. Whenever we're guarding with students, for example, showing them how it works, they all think that it looks simple, and I challenge them all.
I'm not even that good at it. And I'd say half of them or 3 of them can't hit the target. They they're hitting the grass or the dirt below, and it takes a lot of air and a lot of experience.
But if you're good at it and practise a lot, it's excellent, especially in in close range. Because it does reduce the impact that you might have with a another type of, you know, remote delivery system. Other disadvantages, it, you know, takes a long pole, you know, short range, so you can't use it for longer range.
These tubes do come in various lengths as well. From that part yeah. Compressed air guns, they're commonly used remote delivery system.
It uses an extension tube, but you know, a barrel. These are really good, especially in zoo situations. They're quiet and they really cause or they can cause minimal tra trauma, but you can have some trauma if you're not, if you don't set it right, if you're not not careful.
It propels darts by compressed air or CO2, although the better equipment, I mean they, they do have pressure gauges so you can see exactly what you're doing. And, and this is here at our local zoo. We've run 3 zoos, but this is one of them, and here I'm guarding a a tiger.
So the tiger knows what I'm doing, but the tiger is not moving, he's in the back. Nice lateral view, fortunately, occasionally they'll tap the screen and you can quickly pull back, and, and, and even with this, in most cases we have, Give him diazepam initially, so they are slowed down a little less. Some work well.
So the press air guns can include the number of types. This is the one I I'm most familiar with, although I have others here, and this is the Danish jet. These guys can have ranges up to 20 metres on that maybe a little far, but some people can do that.
The impact velocity can be held constant, OK, it's reducible. So I have like a cheat sheet. I have a cheat sheet of, of how far the animal is or how far the target is and the volume in this of the syringe I'm using, and then I, I, I, I made a sheet.
I just practise, you know, I may practise at 10 ft and may practise at 20 or 30 ft at, you know, 2 ccs or 5 ccs or 10 cc guard, and you come up with your little your sheet, give you an idea of what you should set in. And the cost is moderate though. I think can be quite high, but something like this I've had now for 25 years and Great because that's the main one I use.
So again, I'm not pushing any time. The equipment I go and I'm, I'm gonna go through different types and it just depends what you're familiar with I most. This is made in in in Denmark again, it's called Band check.
So, so up here for the, for the damage injector, this is the, on the metre, the pressure gauge right here. We put the CO2 is in here. I press this button, the CO2 leaves go in this cylinder and it stays in this cylinder and it's recorded here on the pressure gauge, and then you have a trigger that you can pull.
This is the CO2. A cylinder that place. And so here is the gun and here's the tubes and it comes with two different size tubes.
One is a 5 cc tube and one for 3 CCs or less, and the 5 you can also use 10 or 15. So this this is for the bigger syringes for the smaller ones. This is the dart you're all familiar with this, I would imagine if not, I'll just tell you as a needle.
At the end of the needle on the side, it has two holes, small holes, and you put the silicon sleeve on them, OK? So with the pressure, it won't force the drug out yet. The first chamber is where you put the drug.
The button here. This is the one in chamber you pressurise and then you have a tailpiece here and that is used for flight and also it is, it always has these ugly colours or bright colours so you can see it in case you miss it in case you, there's a big herd there you know which you started, you can, you can identify. Then when the dart goes in, the silicon sleeve at the on the side here, it forces back and and then opens up the the side holes and and the drugs can can go out and.
So, again, it's a very effective. Pistols, compressed CO2 or powder charges they use, the, the dart use is, you know, depends on the model. It has some advantages, OK?
It's longer range and the compressed air guns, faster speed of darts, easier to handle, but then disadvantages, you know, you have less control of the impact you have can have more trauma and it does cost more. So even though I have this and this is mine, I don't use it. I may have used it once or twice years ago, but I see no advantage of this over the other equipment I have, especially like the the ban inject that I showed you.
The rifle? The rifle is is good for for guarding the long distances, for example, on the ground or if you're in a helicopter. And this we're using a, you know, a powder charge, or the CO2 charges, and the ranges they say can be 60 metres, but this is, you know, ideally to be much less that really pretty far away and hopes that the animal doesn't move during that time to where you're doing something bad to it or or causing injury.
But it it's certainly more powerful, you know, they're durable, this is with, with, with, bullet powder, powder charge, and this is CO2. And this is also very handy, very simple. I have this as well, and use it for for those the far distances when you need it.
The rifle is used primarily in wildlife medicine. I don't know if anyone would use it in the zoo situation, . Power charge advantages, long range, powerful and durable and now many of them are using disposable darts which is nice.
Go ahead and clean it and just put it in fire it. This is a Cape buffalo. It was actually darted out of helicopter in South Africa when I was there when we worked on it, prior to being translocated, and it was an excellent hit.
Here's the, here's the dart. And once we approach these animals, the first thing you do is is make sure they're not moving, not dangerous, but then blindfolded. So some disadvantages though, you know, you can't use it at close range, you can have a lot of tissue trauma.
They're heavy, they're cumbersome, and they're expensive. No, so this is a toy that was guarded with, with a rifle again in Tanzania two years ago when we were teaching students how to do it and it was darted by the, the wildlife vet. It's just a list of some of the Equipment that that that's available for darting.
Dan and Jack and K and Jack Newdart, Palmer capture. Distant Jack, Maxi Jack, Telaar, Zulu, Oma, so these are all, they're all very good. Depends what you have and what you're comfortable with, but there's a lot of choices out there and you just wanna see what, what suits you the best.
This is a tiger that we're working on, just had a hiatal hernia, so we were doing actually a CT. So he was darted first, obviously, with that equipment. Immobilisation process.
Oh, now you're familiar with the drugs and and the equipment we discussed briefly this immobilisation process. First, you always want to make sure there's adequate time for the capture process. You want to plan ahead, you wanna be prepared for any contingency.
We've talked about that. Most cases of animal loss can be attributed to human error because we're not planning adequately. Whenever you want to plan, plan, plan, and then be flexible.
When in doubt, dose high. What does that mean? Well, You think an animal may weigh 100 cakes, but could be maybe a little bit more or less, but you don't go with the less one, you go with the more because if it goes too low, that's when you can have most, most of the of the problems and running around and then rearing and all these other.
And I just remember that a captured animal becomes a very valuable animal because you have an investment equipment, drugs, personal time, all this, and make sure you keep good records so that you can repeat it or you can modify your dosage if needed in the future. So considerations prior to capture. Well, species, very important, the sex.
Is it pregnant or not, the age that they may have some, you know, health issues associated, the weight. It's always important, and we're talking about species, things like the zebra can really be more challenging than many other herbivores that you're gonna be working with. Also, you wanna consider, you know, the physical condition of the animal is in good condition or in poor condition.
It's gonna affect your, your. The drug dosing. The psychological condition of the animal is he's stressed, may require more drugs.
The weather, be aware of it, too hot, it's too cold, you have to account for that or postpone it. The hazards are the trees there, the water there and we get hurt. You gotta consider again what drug selection you're gonna use under those circumstances for that species and prepare everything in advance.
The drugs, the equipment, very important. You check your darts, check your equipment again and plan, plan, plan. Then you have the approach.
You want to avoid loud noises and rapid movements, so you don't want to frighten you alert an animal if you can avoid it. Avoid focusing on the animal, so don't stare at the animal, and they often can can detect that. Try to mimic routine for that captive animal if possible.
For example, if you're in a big zoo and they have a a keeper that drives into this large lot every day at 9 o'clock in the morning to feed some of the animals, maybe it's good to at that time to go with them and and use that for the dar have less, you know, don't expect it. And always remember when you're approaching down animals do so cautiously because some of them can be around very rapidly, even though they may look down. Where do you want to hit these animals?
Well, the large muscles of the proximal hind limb or forelimb. It's what we aim for, of course, in the hind limb it's caudally and cranially in the for lib. You want to try to avoid the large fatty areas, and the optimal sizes may vary with the species.
That would be great if all the animals were marked like these, he, it's exactly. But apparently that doesn't really happen. So this is just a good site for the audiodactylis.
This is a good site for the the cats that you that you're doing. Seldom ever do I do a shoulder because they can move their heads so rapidly, so we almost always try to go to the rear. For bears and bison.
You can go either side, depending on the animal, if they're not too excited aren't moving, sometimes you may go for a shoulder in those because there's less fat, the bison shoulder and and in the bears. So it's, it's, it's also a good good good good site. You want to make sure that you have all your equipment for monitoring.
Very important if you have an anaesthetic machine. This is a small portable anaesthetic machine. So we take that with us in any type of field work locally that is.
You want to make sure you take their temperature. You wanna make sure you can get the heart rate and respiratory rate. Pulse ox we we use on everything for oxygen level and heart rate.
Here this is an animal that make sure he's in a good position, but they're blindfolded, so we often almost always go blindfolded after we treat the eyes. A nasal insulation can be useful, not so helpful in large, real large animals, but because it doesn't hurt, but certainly in the smaller round. But again, we almost always use high so and then depending on the species, you may need, heat support which is hand syringe of course, but, but make sure you have supplemental heat.
You also wanna make sure you have crash kits there, . Moon moon kits, ropes if needed, and, you know, first aid kit for humans. So what do we do for monitoring and mobilise animals?
Well, you wanna observe the body condition, make sure that nothing's impinging on the respiration, cover their eyes, plug their ears, just make sure that you do not forget to remove the plugs from their ears, and even their eyes. Sometimes I've seen in the wild where animals reversed before even the eye cover was removed and that's always a challenging time. Hobble the legs if needed, and then monitor the vital signs.
You got the pulse ox, monitor respiration, temperature, stethoscope. Avoid loud noises. You don't want to stimulate, and always check for wounds, injuries, and type of physical injury from the guarding or or going down process.
We're almost through now. I appreciate you staying with us, just a couple more slides, but recovering the animals is important. Never leave the sedated animals unattended, you know, observe the recovery very closely.
Avoid recovering the animals in your hazards, and assist in thermal regulation if needed. And also, try to recover them in lateral recovery if possible, if not other choices, of course. Use the antagonist, fluid therapy when indicated, it's always important.
Now and don't forget your photo opportunity at the end. You don't want to do anything that it takes, takes much time, but it's good for teaching if you're ever gonna use these for talks or anything, and it's, it's worth the time. So you know, do a quick photo op.
A number of books are out there including Bauer's books, the Zoo and Wild Animal Medicine, but these two are those I, I particularly recommend for Day and for chemical immobilisation. One is by Krieger at all Handbook of wildlife chemical mobilisation. The one I really use the most, zoo animal and wildlife immobilisation anaesthesia.
This is really very good. It goes through each group of animals, and it also has been a puncture sites it talks about and all sorts of things associated with that anaesthesia. So this would be one that would be really wanted for your library.
So again, chemical restraint is an important tool in zoological medicine, including wildlife, some clinical practises even, to facilitate and permit your intended procedures to be accomplished safely, and hopefully effectively, and it's always challenging and it's usually pretty exciting I have to admit. So again, thanks for, staying in tuned. I appreciate it and again, best wishes.