Laboratory Exercise in Avian Handling, Diagnostic Sample Collection and Bandaging
Patrick T. Redig DVM, PhD
Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences
Avian Core -- CVM 6880

  1. Capture and Restraint
    1. Student Pairs -- 1 pigeon or chicken each
      1. Over the back, two handed hold
      2. One hand hold (wings, legs, and tail)
      3. One-handed hold for cockatiels and budgies
      4. Two-handed hold: legs in one hand with index finger between leg, body cradled in crook of opposite arm with fingers holding the wings against bird?s body.
      5. Table Top Restraint: legs and head with wings under control
      6. Transfer of restrained bird
    2. Demos and Volunteer Handling: Demonstration by experienced handler, interested students can volunteer for one-on-one instruction with raptors (red-tailed hawk or great horned owl.

  2. Injectable anesthesia

    Pigeons: draw up 0.2 cc each

    Quail: draw up 0.1 cc each of ketamine and xylazine into a tuberculin syringe. Give 0.1 cc of the mixture by intramuscular injection in the breast

  3. Physical Examination and basic procedures (after anesthesia)
    1. Whole body exam: Head, wings (all joints and bones), legs (all joints and bones), feathers, tail, mouth and cloaca
    2. Venipuncture: Using a tuberculin syringe with a 25 gauge needle, collect up to 0.5 ml blood from wing (pigeons) or wing, leg and jugular (chickens). Prepare blood films using conventional push slide techniques. Discard syringe and needle in sharps container.
    3. Swab trachea, crop and cloaca using cotton-tipped applicators or calcium alginate nasopharyngeal swabs, as size of orifice on patient dictates
    4. Pass crop tube (see attached figure) -- inject a small volume of water. Avoid regurgitation and aspiration of fluid into trachea.
    5. Using a 3 cc (quail) or 6 cc syringe (pigeon), inject a volume of saline subcutaneously in the inguinal region.
    6. As in F., inject a volume of saline intravenously into the jugular or basilic veins.
    7. Using a 6 cc or 12 cc syringe with a red rubber tube affixed to the hub, inject 4 - 5 cc of saline into the crop of a pigeon. Immediately withdraw a small amount of the fluid while massaging the crop. Dispence contents withdrawn onto a glass slide; examine under a microscope at 40X with reduced lighting. What do you see?

  4. Bandaging
    1. Apply figure of 8 bandage to wing -- see attached figure
    2. Apply ball bandage to foot -- see attached figure
    3. Tape one wing to body with Durapore Tape or masking tape

  5. Wing and Nail Trim
    1. Using a scissors, trim primary feathers as shown on attached diagram
    2. Using nail trimmers, trim claws on pigeon and/or quail
See McCluggage, D. Chapter 47 in Ritchie, B. G Harrison, L Harrison. Avian Medicine: Principles and Application. Wingers Publ. Lake Worth, Florida 1994. 1384pp.


Materials Needed:

Live Birds:
  • One pigeon or chicken per pair of students
  • Three red-tailed hawks
Anesthetic Agents: one bottle each of ketamine and xylazine

Miscellaneous Materials:
  • Kling-gauze: one roll of each for each pair of students
    • 1" rolls -- 40 rolls
    • 2" rolls -- 40 rolls
  • 2" x 2" gauze sponges - 5 pkgs
  • Vetrap (2"): one roll for each pair of students - 40 rolls
  • 3 cc syringes without needle - 40
  • 12 cc syringes with 4" rubber tube, 5 French: one per 2 pairs of students (20)
  • Tuberculin syringes - 100
  • 25 gauge needles - 1 box of 100
  • Cotton-tipped applicators - 100
  • Calcium alginate swabs - 50
  • Euthanasia Solution
  • Microscope slides -- 200
  • Saline - 2 L
  • Masking tape - 3/4"wide - 10 rolls