Happy Holidays, a House Finch on Christmas and Breaking our Record!!
Yes, we’re open today! Caring for animals is a 365 day/year job. We choose to be open for admission on holidays so we can be available for animals in need.
On this white Christmas day, we received a House Finch. This male adult House Finch has a common ailment, conjunctivitis. The conjunctivitis that House Finches get is a contagious eye infection that can spread through flocks of finches. Prior to last year, we had no treatment for this disease and had to euthanize these guys on admit due to the risk that IF they survived, they would asymptomatic carriers and spread it to other house finches in the wild.
However, last year a study came out with a treatment that eliminates the risk of the carrier state. We can now treat these birds, and most do very well! This finch will likely be released in 3 weeks.
This year has been a great one and incredibly busy! Last week, we broke our all time record for number of animals admitted in one year. The record was 8,585 animals admitted in 2006. Currently, we are at 8,607!! If we broke that down evenly, that’s 23 animals each day! However, during the winter we’re only getting 2-10 animals per day–which leaves us on some summer days admitting >100 animals! But we have 5 more days of 2010, so we’ll see how many animals we admit this year. Happy Holidays from WRC!