VET'Scorner Whop Whop!


A Whooper Swan was admit ted last November af ter crash landing. It arrived bleeding f rom the beak.


This is not uncommon as waterfowl somet imes mistake a wet road for a body of water. Usually, they just come away with a few abrasions on the legs, but on this occasion the swan must have hit hard. Blood in the mouth usually indicates something more serious.


Af ter radiographs were taken under general anaesthesia, we found one of the clavicles (collarbone) was broken. Clavicles generally heal really very well; most pat ients requiring just a few weeks of cage rest with pain relief .


Somet imes we bandage the wing. As well as managing any injury we always have to manage stress for an animal in our care. Whooper swans can be aggressive, dif f icult to handle and are far more stressful than our more commonly admit ted Mute Swans.


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So two weeks of cage rest for a Whooper swan can be very challenging for both the bird and staf f . Luckily, this swan had a simple and well aligned f racture so we made a decision to move the swan outside af ter just 10 days.


Whooper swans are migratory birds; they are heavy swans and require a strong and healthy skeleton to be able to f ly all the way to Iceland during the spring, therefore a poorly healed f racture could af fect the future of this swan.


Bone f ractures in birds heal much faster than mammals, they have the ability to create a bone callus in only 21-28 days, and so a total stay of 5-6 weeks was thought to be enough t ime for a f racture of this nature to heal.


In many cases like this you have to weigh up the pros and cons of cage rest vs the stress of keeping an animal conf ined where it could do itself some serious injury.


In this case the team decided to risk taking him outside earlier to reduce stress. We monitored the swan closely init ially but soon realised that we had made the correct choice as they bird appeared very relaxed.


that the f racture was healing nicely and af ter 5 weeks we observed the swan elevat ing its body f rom the ground with wing movement . It was ready for release.


We monitored weekly to ensure


The Whooper was released the f irst week of January in Cromwell Bot tom Nature Reserve (Leeds).......a fantast ic result for the team!!


The l at est news


f r om t he vet t eam at St apel ey Gr ange


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