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Exotic Animal Medicine: A Quick Reference Guide
Exotic pets are more popular than ever before, so make sure you are ready to care for everything from rats to songbirds with Exotic Animal A Quick Reference Guide, 2nd Edition. Expanded with three all new chapters and updated content, this new edition provides the key points on differential diagnoses and diagnostics, along with background information on a wide variety of exotic pets, to veterinary practitioners who may or may not have experience treating them. Its practical quick-reference outline format makes it easy for you to see the conditions likely to be encountered within a species; develop a potential differential diagnosis list quickly; initiate an investigational plan; and view treatment regimens.
656 pages, Paperback
First published June 2, 2009
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June 10, 2010
As someone who doesn’t see many exotics in practice, except on an emergency basis, I was very excited to review this textbook. As the back cover states, it is a “quick reference guide that provides readily accessible, user- friendly information for veterinarians” and goes on to state it “will also be invaluable to veterinary students, nurses, and technicians around the world”, and it is just that.
The book is broken up into chapters based on the type of exotic animal as opposed to other exotic texts that break chapters into disease processes, nursing care or husbandry. This makes the information very easy to find and use, and eliminates the need for an Appendix. The list of exotics covered in this text is extensive, and includes ferrets, rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, degus, mice, hamsters, rats, gerbils, parrots, songbirds, softbills, common lizards, snakes, tortoises, turtles, frogs, toads, salamanders, goldfish, koi, and tropical freshwater and marine fish.
Each chapter gives a brief history of the species, and describes the difference between related species, when applicable. The chapters are then broken into topics including Consultation and Handling, which provides ways to get patients to cooperate and ways to obtain lab samples.. Additional topics include Nursing Care, Fluid Therapy, Blood Transfusions, Nutritional Support, Analgesia, Anesthesia and topics related to each body system and their potential problems. Within the body system topics are exam findings, diagnostics tests, treatments and specific therapies. Some of these topics change within the chapters for the different species. There are many tables provided with normals, formularies and anesthetic protocols. Any time there is important or useful information for the reader, it is put into a yellow box for quick finding. Where information is redundant between species, the author directs you to the appropriate chapter or table.
The book is fully in color and is pretty good sized. It even includes a blue ribbon to use as a bookmark for important pages you don’t want to lose. The only thing missing that could have made this book even better was if it were spiral bound; this could have made it easier for a technician with limited exotic experience to reference a procedure without having to go back to flip open the book to the necessary page. Another thing to note is that this book was written in Britain, which means some of the drugs listed are either not available in the United States, or are used off label.
One of the most fascinating and useful sections of the book was under the chapter related to Parrots. There is a large section of questions to ask owners to determine the causes of self mutilation and feather-picking, as well as a feather scoring system. Since this is a common reason to see parrots, I think this section could be much used. However, I was a bit disappointed that neither behavior, nor enrichment ideas are provided for any of the exotics in this text. While these topics are covered in other exotic animal textbooks, with as much information as this book already provided, it could have been a nice addition to each chapter.
I found this book extremely interesting, and I learned a lot of new techniques and information that I hope to be able to use in practice soon! While it would be an amazing asset for a practice that sees lots of exotic patients, it would also be an invaluable reference for a technician who sees exotics less frequently. This text, with its easy to read, easy to find information covering a multitude of species, is a must have.
The book is broken up into chapters based on the type of exotic animal as opposed to other exotic texts that break chapters into disease processes, nursing care or husbandry. This makes the information very easy to find and use, and eliminates the need for an Appendix. The list of exotics covered in this text is extensive, and includes ferrets, rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, degus, mice, hamsters, rats, gerbils, parrots, songbirds, softbills, common lizards, snakes, tortoises, turtles, frogs, toads, salamanders, goldfish, koi, and tropical freshwater and marine fish.
Each chapter gives a brief history of the species, and describes the difference between related species, when applicable. The chapters are then broken into topics including Consultation and Handling, which provides ways to get patients to cooperate and ways to obtain lab samples.. Additional topics include Nursing Care, Fluid Therapy, Blood Transfusions, Nutritional Support, Analgesia, Anesthesia and topics related to each body system and their potential problems. Within the body system topics are exam findings, diagnostics tests, treatments and specific therapies. Some of these topics change within the chapters for the different species. There are many tables provided with normals, formularies and anesthetic protocols. Any time there is important or useful information for the reader, it is put into a yellow box for quick finding. Where information is redundant between species, the author directs you to the appropriate chapter or table.
The book is fully in color and is pretty good sized. It even includes a blue ribbon to use as a bookmark for important pages you don’t want to lose. The only thing missing that could have made this book even better was if it were spiral bound; this could have made it easier for a technician with limited exotic experience to reference a procedure without having to go back to flip open the book to the necessary page. Another thing to note is that this book was written in Britain, which means some of the drugs listed are either not available in the United States, or are used off label.
One of the most fascinating and useful sections of the book was under the chapter related to Parrots. There is a large section of questions to ask owners to determine the causes of self mutilation and feather-picking, as well as a feather scoring system. Since this is a common reason to see parrots, I think this section could be much used. However, I was a bit disappointed that neither behavior, nor enrichment ideas are provided for any of the exotics in this text. While these topics are covered in other exotic animal textbooks, with as much information as this book already provided, it could have been a nice addition to each chapter.
I found this book extremely interesting, and I learned a lot of new techniques and information that I hope to be able to use in practice soon! While it would be an amazing asset for a practice that sees lots of exotic patients, it would also be an invaluable reference for a technician who sees exotics less frequently. This text, with its easy to read, easy to find information covering a multitude of species, is a must have.
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