Exotic Animal Medicine for the Veterinary Technician â 2nd edition

Field: Veterinary (Health Sciences)

As a veterinarian with a passion for exotic animal medicine, I am all too aware of the range of challenges facing veterinarians wanting to work in this field. Exotic animal medicine is a relatively new area of specialization, and is evolving rapidly. It takes a concerted effort to keep on top of the latest trends. One of the things that has allowed me to continue pursuing my passion in my practice is having a skilled team of animal health technologists who share my love of all things weird and wonderful. It is for this reason that I was so excited to read this book, as I hoped it would prove to be a valuable resource for our staff.

The book is divided into sections on birds, reptiles, amphibians, exotic companion mammals, wildlife, and hematology. Each section is further subdivided into chapters, each covering a range of topics, including anatomy, physiology, husbandry, nutrition, common diseases, behavior, reproduction, restraint, parasitiology, radiology, euthanasia, etc. The pictures within the chapters are in black and white, but many of them are also printed in color in the center of the book.

I was impressed with over-all quality of the information covered in the book; it is up-to-date and well-explained. I particularly enjoyed the avian chapters, which included excellent information on nutrition and behavior. The amphibian section has an excellent description of anesthetizing frogs with topical isoflurane, which I have seen discussed in other references, but never in such detail.

The book presents a lot of very practical information. Most of the sections included diagrams of the locations of vessels for venipuncture, which is very much appreciated. In the wildlife chapter, there is a very useful section that simply covered what you should recommend on the phone when people find injured or orphaned wildlife, including tricks and tips on how to determine if an animal is actually orphaned. There are also extensive tables in the appendices of how to house and what to feed different wildlife species, and even how to tell nestling songbirds apart.

The one complaint I would have is that I found the lizard chapter a bit frustrating to read, as though the author was talking over my head. Given that the intended audience for this book are AHTs, I believe that this is a significant weakness. For example, the author would often give the scientific name of a species without listing the common name as well, which made it difficult to keep track of what species was being discussed. On page 95, the author mentions Heloderma spp. as being dangerous to humans, but never mentions anywhere in the chapter what the common name is, or why they are dangerous. This frustrated me, and I ended up having to search for this information on the Internet (for those who are interested, Heloderma spp. include gila monsters and bearded lizards, both of which are venomous). Given that the author was trying to inform the reader about the risks these animals could pose, it would have been prudent to provide more detail, rather than assuming people already knew what he was referring to, or forcing them to search for this information elsewhere. Another thing I found a little odd is that in the parasitology portion of the chapter, there are a number of photo plates of different species of parasites. One of the photos is of a parasite named Nycototherus, but this parasite is not mentioned anywhere in the text. It is actually an interesting looking parasite, which I assume was part of the reason it was included, but it would have been nice to have a bit more information on the species it affects, and what the clinical symptoms associated with it are.

Over-all, I feel that this is a very useful reference, both for animal health technologists, and veterinarians. There are plenty of tables, diagrams, and pictures that would be helpful as a quick reference.