Advising specialized care for certain exotic species

Should certain animal species be referred to an exotics or zoological specialist? S. Emi Knafo, DVM, DACZM, zoological medicine specialist and assistant clinical professor of zoological medicine at the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville, discussed treating exotic companion animals such as rabbits, reptiles and birds, as well as zoological medicine, in a dvm360 interview. In this video, Knafo talks about certain exotic pet species that often require safety protocols and unique knowledge about them for safe and effective veterinary care.

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The following is a transcript of the video:

dvm360: Which exotic species are best cared for by a specialist?

S. Emi Knafo, DVM, DACZM: Anything that is potentially dangerous to your staff. So, things like pet caimans [and] obviously venomous snakes. I mean, we don't see venomous snakes. We leave that for the zoo collections. We don't see privately owned.

Nonhuman primates. if you're not well versed in the biosecurity protocols I would not [see them]. Pet raccoons can be a real challenge if you don't have a squeeze cage or a pull syringe—that that can put people at risk, they will not hesitate to bite you.

I say anything that potentially could be a threat. A serval, while they're nice with their owners, they are definitely a challenge in the back. And so a lot of times we hear stories of, ‘oh, well, my usual vet will just let me hold them while they do all the injections and stuff.’ Now, I guess that's up to them, but we know that that's a liability if the owner were to get injured, and so we always say, like, ‘you know we have to have you put the animal into the squeeze cage for us, and then we're going to administer the injection safely without anyone holding.’

Parrots. That really depends on if you have people comfortable holding because you can be the most skilled avian vet in the world, but if you don't have a reliable person to hold and restrain that bird safely, you're not going to get very far and, in fact, things could go south if you're not holding that bird safely. We do know that you can manually cause a lot of trauma to birds if you're not holding them well, and then people obviously can get bitten if you're not controlling the head well. So having your staff comfortable and trained is really important if you're going to see these species.

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