Pictured above are the NINE rats from Miller Park Zoo. One male and eight females! This past week was full of exotic experiences. Let’s start with Ivana. Ivana is currently doing a prospective research study on rats. Summary: she wants to see if there’s a less invasive, but still accurate method to record [...]
This week we are featuring an important part of our team: The Turtle Dogs!
Students in the Wildlife Epidemiology Lab at the UIUC College of Veterinary Medicine take our teaching box turtles out to play! Some love it, some hate it.
Last week, veterinarians and veterinary students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign performed pre-release exams on Alligator Snapping Turtles (ASTs)! Check out our video to see this endangered species health assessments!
What is that dinosaur? Its an alligator snapping turtle! Quite a unique species, huh? Ivana performing a blood draw from the dorsal tail vein of an alligator snapping turtle Let’s start with the highlights, shall we? On Thursday and Friday morning Bryce and Ivana had the opportunity to help with annual [...]
It was a strange week for team beardy, with lots of work, travel and celebration. Ivana started off the week with Dr. Webb helping her with another trial of her prospective Alfaxalone study. The study was discussed in a previous blog post but in summary the study consists of administering alfaxalone through variety of [...]
So you have all gotten to experience the excitement of the portion of our days spent in the field, but you have yet to experience the joys of our lab work! We actually both really enjoy working in the lab. It gives us a chance to organize all of our samples and learn a little [...]
This week, Turtle Team traveled up north to the land of the Blanding's. For one week each summer, we hold a competition to see who can trap the most Blanding's turtles, an endangered species in Illinois. A turtle tech is paired with a veterinarian (or vet student). The turtle techs are the trapping experts, and [...]
New! This week! And all future weeks! Introducing…..Eliana! Eliana is a rising second year veterinary student who recently joined Team Beardie with Bryce and me. Scroll to the bottoms for a GREAT picture of her. She is a delight, and helped me this week with my personal research project on pet rats. We did physical [...]
A beautiful juvenile Eastern Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) that we found under some foliage Now that all the Lake Erie water snakes have officially moved into the Wildlife Epidemiology Lab and treatment shifts are officially underway, we thought it would be fun and important to go over something that many people may have [...]
