If an animal is maintained in long – term care accomodation, the animal must be given access to a pool.
Careful monitoring is required when first given access to a pool to ensure that the bird is not becoming waterlogged and drowned.
Pools should provide an easy exit from the water, e.g. long sheets of rubber malling draped into the pool and a ramp.
These young orphaned gulls on the photograph were succesfully released. However, one was found 1 year later dead on an air port in southern Sweden ( collision with a plane) 300 – 400 km away from us.
Cheers,
Ann Novek
Sweden
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
Seeing as we’re all about the earth’s finite resources when it comes to fur vs petro-chemical, I can’t but help what the justification is for expending resources “rehabilitating” common gulls.
Would it not be kinder to the planet to let nature take its course in the case of the gulls?
Just askin’ is all.
Hi IceClass,
I get much of questions like that…but we are a bird and small mammal rehab center and don’t discriminate between our patients . We take care of glamourous sea eagles as well as common gulls!
There are vet clinics for kanagaroos in Australia, there are seal hospitals , badger hospitals etc for animals which there are plenty of and aren’t endangered in any way or are considered pest or garbage birds.
Another aspect on the rescued gulls. In the Baltic Sea the ” white birds”, gulls, terns, etc are affected by a mysterious disease that affect the nervous system. No clues yet, what’s the cause , a virus , sea contamination or a disease that is similar to the disease that salmon is affected of. We want answers on these questions and are working together with the Swedish Veterinary Institution re statistics , autopsy etc.
We want to know for example if the parents died of this disease , is it carried over to the chicks. ( The parents died of paralysis). On some places in the Baltic Sea the population has decreased drastically due to this neurological disease.
Great work Ann. There are issues of ethics and duty of care as well as learning about species and how to care for them for future reference. What is a “common” gull today may not be so common in 10 years time.
A little note here re IceClass’ question if it’s not better to let nature have it’s go re the gulls.
We are conducting as well what one could call practical research re the gulls. I mentioned that the ” white sea birds along the Baltic Sea are affected by a mysterious neurological disease , that no one yet knows the answer to.
Some believe its related to the salmon disease M 74 that affects salmon farms . The fish and the sea birds show the same signs of disease as paralysis and a breakdown of brain tissue. It is believed that this depends on B-vitamin deficiency ( tiamin).
We on the rehab center have found out if injecting the birds with high dosage tiamin combined with antibiotics might in some cases cure the sea birds.
The media is as well very interesting in this issue re the sick gulls….
HAPPY EASTER TO EVERYONE !!!!
Happy Easter Ann. Thanks for the animal stories.