Dog donates blood to save life of cat that had eaten rat poison.

Rodenticide poisoning in pets accounts for a large percentage of deaths in households basically because pets are curious ravaging and rooting at every corner and most importantly the owners were not discrete when applying baits. Rodenticide poisoning is an emergency and its easy to prevent your pets from consuming the poison than running around after deed is done. Read how to lay baits in the house to prevent poisoning in pets. see When the level of poisoning is high and condition critical,peculiar interventions can be employed to save the pet. This was what happened when a cat ate rat poison,the owner rushed to the vet who did what she could do to save the cat. The vet did a blood transfusion using a dog's blood and luck was on her side as she did not have time to type the blood,but cat survived. The owner is happy and cat is doing well and without any doggy behavior. read

Bulgarian stray cats get bionic legs .

Bulgarian stray cats get bionic legs.Two stray Bulgarian cats who lost their hind legs in accidents have been given bionic paws, in what vets say is the first such operation in Europe outside Britain. One-year-old Pooh, whose name means "fluff" in Bulgarian, scurries around Sofia's Central Vet Clinic, chasing a toy mouse and curiously sniffing at medicine bottles inside an open cupboard—just like any other cat would. The only difference is a gentle tapping sound as his two tiny polymer-and-rubber paws mounted on titanium stems touch the floor. Pooh, who is thought to have lost his legs in a car or train accident last April, is back on the prowl thanks to Bulgarian veterinary surgeon Vladislav Zlatinov. He is the first vet in Europe to successfully apply the pioneering method of Irish neuro-orthopaedic surgeon Noel Fitzpatrick, who shot to fame in 2009 when making Oscar the first bionic cat by fitting him with new hind legs in Britain. continue

Corn turning French hamsters into deranged cannibals.

A new research has shown that corn turning French hamsters into deranged cannibals.A diet of corn is turning wild hamsters in northeastern France into deranged cannibals that devour their offspring, there is an imbalance, and the hamster habitat is collapsing. The findings, reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, finger industrial-scale monoculture as the culprit. Once nourished by a variety of grains, roots and insects, the burrowing rodents live today in a semi-sterile and unbroken ocean of industrially grown maize, or corn. The monotonous diet is leaving the animals starving, the problem is a lack of vitamins especially vitamin B3, or niacin. According to the report, A first set of lab experiments with wild specimens compared wheat and corn-based diets, with side dishes of clover or worms. There was virtually no difference in the number of pups born, or the basic nutritional value of the different menus.,but when it came to survival rates, the difference was dramatic. About four-fifths of the pups born of mothers feasting on wheat-and-clover or wheat-and-worms were weaned. while only 5% , of the baby hamsters whose mothers ate corn instead of wheat stayed alive that long. These females stored their pups with their hoards of maize before eating them, and Pups were still alive at that time. The cannibal mothers showed other signs of abnormality,such as climbing,running in circles and pounding their feeders. The females also had swollen and dark tongues, and blood so thick it was difficult to draw for samples. Vitamin B3 deficiency has been linked to 'black-tongue' syndrome in dogs, and a condition in humans called pellagra, also known as the "3-D" disease: diarrhoea, dementia and dermatitis, such as eczema.

Feedback and disease prevention in pigs.

Feedback and disease prevention in pigs. The term feedback refers to methods of controlled antigen oral exposure in pig farming,and several methods have been explored to stimulate antibodies in the sows and piglet. The major benefit of feedback is to ensure a disease free stock and production of healthy piglets. The feedback material is usually fed to the sows 8-10 weeks before farrowing to ensure that colostrum is concentrated with antibodies. The common form of feedback material is fecal matter from scouring pigs or from sows in gestation and this will generate maternal antibodies that will be available through colostrum. Pig intestines from sick pigs,low-weight piglets and from dying neonates. The purpose is to extract a concentrated material that contains specific bacterial agents that came from sow feces and the best source for these agents is probably the intestines of young pigs. Another feedback method involves freezing the material into ice blocks giving the pigs access to lick and chew before it melts or the feedback is processed and the slurry is poured on the sows feed. The efficacy of feedback depends on the time of giving feedback, type of feedback collected and the housing arrangement of the sows.The housing arrangement is key as feedback practice has proved to become more difficult when keeping gestating sows in groups, as sows are free to move around and When using electronic Sow Feeding (ESF) stations as the sows are not simultaneously fed,thus exposure to feedback is not uniform. A research published in the Journal of Swine Health and Production says providing additional ice blocks to sows might overcome the nonuniform exposure to feedback and thus confer herd immunity.Enteric pathogens of swine can be frozen and still be viable. Ice blocks could provide a convenient and effective vehicle for controlled exposure of pathogens to pen-gestating sows if sufficient numbers of sows interact with the ice blocks before they melt. The research shows, that when ice was placed in the pen on two consecutive time points 1 week apart, over 90% of the sows in the large dynamic pen contacted the ice. When 4 blocks were used instead of 2 blocks,this increased the number of sows to make contact with the ice, as well as increasing the duration of contact by individual sows and decreasing aggression at the ice block.

MEPs hop into action on rabbit farming welfare

MEPs hop into action on rabbit farming welfare: Member States of the European Union are encouraging rabbit farmers to phase out conventional battery cages.

Indian pork industry benefits from UK pig semen

Indian pork industry benefits from UK pig semen: The Indian and British livestock sectors have strengthened relations after pig semen from UK animals was shipped to India for the first time.

Avian Flu Outbreaks Raise Concerns About Possible Pandemic.

Avian Flu Outbreaks Raise Concerns About Possible Pandemic. U.K. officials confirmed a fifth area in the country has been hit with the H5N8 strain of the avian flu since December. The strain has been spread from wild birds to farmed poultry, but has yet to affect humans, according to the U.K. Department of the Environment. There have been more than 40 countries reporting outbreaks of different strains of the avian flu since last November, according to World Health Organization officials. With the new avian flu outbreaks popping up in recent months, health experts have been increasingly concerned that one or more of the various strains of avian flu could mutate, increasing the risk of a dangerous new flu that could spread quickly across the globe. Normally the virus spreads among birds, often transmitted long distances by wild birds that migrate. In rare cases people in close contact to the birds become ill and the virus rarely spreads from person to person. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said the public health community is increasingly concerned that the virus could potentially mutate. "The concern always is that they could pick up a gene that permits that kind of flu to spread readily from person to person," Schaffner said. Currently "bird flu by itself cannot do that." However, Schaffner said in recent years the medical community has developed better surveillance technology to find new outbreaks more easily. On Monday, World Health Organization said they were on "high alert" due to the avian flu outbreaks and the possibility of mutation. During an address to the WHO executive board on Monday, WHO Director Margaret Chan explained one form of the virus first detected in humans in 2015 was created "by gene-swapping among four different viruses." She urged all countries to closely watch for avian flu cases in both birds and humans to stop any new easily transmitted strain of the virus from spreading. "We cannot afford to miss the early signals," Chan said. continue