My Veterinary Essentials

Today I worked on a Harris' Hawk. These medium sized raptors weigh approximately 1kg or 2.2 pounds. Just as a comparison, your average domestic cat, about the size of a Harris' Hawk, might weigh 3kg. Birds are actually much lighter than they look. This bird needed a blood sample; it was taken from the right jugular vein as expected (if you have been reading my blogs). I find that taking blood samples from birds while they are in an upright position is less stressful for the bird and causes fewer hematoma formations. A hematoma is simply a blood filled mass; this occurs when an animal bleeds from the vessel where the blood sample was taken. Hematoma formation can be minimized when the vessel is held off after sampling and an appropriate sized needle is used. Hematomas can be life threatening in small birds as it can lead to significant blood loss. To calculate the safe amount of blood that can be removed from a mammal or bird consider the following: In general,  an animals blood volume is ten percent of its body weight in grams. In general, it is safe to take ten percent of an animals blood; therefore we can safely take one percent of the animals weight in grams. This means we can take 1ml of blood for every 100g of body weight; we could have taken 10ml from the Harris' Hawk.