[Music] you we always know we can take our pets to the vet when they need help but where do our friends in the wild go it's important that we take care of our outdoor buddies and the University of Illinois has a clinic to help them out on this edition of the paw report I'm talking with dr. Sarah reach and Adrianne Coleman from the University of Illinois wildlife medical clinic about their multifaceted program and how it benefits the animals and people in our area [Music] the paw report on wiU is supported by rural cane America's Farm and Home Store livestock feed farm equipment pet supplies and more you can find your store and more information regarding roll king a troll king calm dave's decorating center is a proud supporter of the paw report on wtiu dave's decorating center features the mohawk smartstrand silk forever clean carpet Dave's decorating Center authorized Mohawk color Center in Charleston thanks for joining us for this episode of the paw report you will notice we are not at the studios of wtiu we have gone on the road to the University of Illinois for a wonderful episode here at the wildlife medical clinic thanks for joining us today we have Sarah reach and we have Adrianne Coleman with the clinic here to talk about all their wonderful clients their new space that there have moved into and all the other great and neat stuff that you do here at the wildlife clinic so thank you both for joining us thank you yeah well we'll start with why don't you both tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do here at the clinic Adrienne sure yeah so I am a lead avian trainer so I help train the students and all of our volunteers on how to handle and train and care for all the resident animals that we have at our facility which is now up to nine so we have quite a few critters to care for day in and day out and you brought some critters with yes yeah we did we brought some of our friends so these are our wildlife ambassadors as they're they're named and we brought them here we have Derby over here our eastern screech owl Odin our red-tailed hawk and I have an American Kestrel thistle and we have our Eastern Box Turtle hazel I love that you name them all that's that's great and they're just like your pets you just handle them like they're you know your buddies that's that's really neat Sarah tell us a little bit about you and your role here at the clinic yeah so I'm so act as medical director here um so basically I am in charge of the veterinary care for both our wildlife patients and then for these little critters right here on our outreach team so I get to kind of work a lot with the teaching hospital as well with our student volunteers how long has the clinic been around yeah so we were founded in 1978 so we were actually coming up on our 40th anniversary which is quite a big deal for us and the nice thing is we went from just a handful of students technicians in a veterinarian to having over a hundred volunteers multiple veterinarians a bunch of different specialists that work with us as well as a big change in our facility so we've come come a long way why was there a need for a medical center well we started in a very small space just used a little section of the ER of many many moons ago and then they moved us to the basement of a small animal clinic and that had limitations on expansion so it was a great space and we still use it actually for our resident animals but we did we definitely needed more space to expand in this facilities is gonna provide that for us and probably even expanding on that answer is the mission of the wildlife clinic and maybe that also explains why you do exist today yeah exactly so our mission is threefold so obviously our first kind of branch is to provide medical care for sick injured and orphaned wildlife native wildlife here to Illinois and then our next branch is basically to provide training to students both veterinary and undergraduate students as well as veterinarians in the form of our residents and interns across the street and then kind of our last area and especially highlighted here with these critters is to provide outreach and education to the public in the local community how has the you mentioned the space and we're going to get into that a little bit more because that's the new and exciting addition to your clinic that you've needed for a long time but how has it evolved since the 70s the clinic how has it changed how has it grown how has it evolved over time yeah so I think I mean in space in people uh-hum so as Adrian said we basically just started out in a very tiny portion of the hospital that wasn't designed for us at all but there was a need for for veterinary care for these wildlife patients that the public saw that we saw and so a very few devout people kind of started that out and then realizing that we needed more space wheat like she said moved down to the basement which was really two rooms again that weren't designed for us and we kind of adapted to our situation which is kind of the hallmark of wildlife medicine is you adapt to whatever whatever place you have and and then we started growing and so we grew to a hundred volunteers so so numerous students undergraduate veterinary technicians outside volunteers all sorts of people as well as the numbers of our our patients grew and so we started really outpacing the space that we had and so we really knew we needed to move but it kind of the timing and the space we're really up in the air so the university actually purchased the simulator building which is the building we're in right now a couple years ago and it actually stayed vacant for quite some time because no one really had developed a purpose for it and so after a while the the Dean was like someone has to move in here and Wildlife was like yep yep we will and so we moved into a temporary space for about nine months which was to three times the space that we had down in the basement as we were developing building designing our very own space down the hall which we moved into in April and it's been great because it's specially designed by us and for for the critters that we have and it's the first time in 40 years that you've you've had more space your eyes light up about this this area take us on a tour if you if you could tell us about the new additions the new space plans for the future that you that you have here because yeah we're going to be able to show our viewers some of it yeah some of the year yeah well I can talk about the average spacing and adrien chareyre broad number they're so so our new clinic like I said we got to design it so we kind of knew exactly what needed to go into the space and so our first area is kind of our office space but it's not just that it's where students can work on medical records it's where they can round as a group and talk about the cases that they have in the clinic and then we have next to that are two kind of treatment rooms that we've subdivided if you will into an intensive care unit and a pharmacy and then the next one over is our treatment area and our laboratory so we can provide specialized care for some of the patients that are coming in with a critical need if you will as well as doing a lot of the the lab and pharmacy stuff in-house instead of having to go over to the teaching hospital to do it excuse me and then kind of our next section of the clinic is our holding area and this is where it's kind of the most exciting because we were able to separate out different holding areas so we can actually separate baby animals from prey animals and predator animals and even have a quarantine area if needed which is something we never had in in all of our other spaces is that really separation area which is honestly quite necessary for the patients that we have to give them as much of a stress free area as possible because they don't want to be in captivity and honestly and then kind of behind that we have some larger Run areas so for larger animals like our Eagles our geese our Pelican which we'll talk about maybe a little bit later things like that and then and then we have a whole nother side of things where this is what we've done so far but we have so many plans for the future yeah so as I spoke of early we had the basement space and we still do for our resident animals so currently we have an opossum that lives down there and then when it's inclement weather the birds come in occasionally but most the time they're out in a flight cage on display between the buildings the small animal clinic and basic science building so ideally we would like to build a large facility that's displaying all of our animal and bass out here in the front of our new clinic which will be great because it's often hard for people to find us where we're at right now and then it puts us closer to them so it's gonna be a really nice new building that will be up front hopefully breaking ground very soon and so we will have all the birds out and they will have an indoor space and an outdoor space they will be able to come in at night and when it's inclement and so they can stay out pretty much on display all the time so people can come by and see the birds when they choose to do so and then we'll even have a little time for them right it's designed for them so we have the space that they have now while it's worked we were outgrown it especially with the Eagle she needs a lot larger of a space so we're gonna have it in a pool in there for her which will be you know sort of part of the structure versus sort of bringing our little tubs in and things like that so she will have a much larger space and they all could use a little larger space little larger conditions and then our reptiles will also be in an indoor space at the end and there'll be a stage and we can do presentations out there as well so we're really looking forward to the public being able to see our reptiles as well and our main our solo mammal that we've acquired that will be out soon for presentations but so we're hoping that that way people can see us more we're more of a presence or marva a visual present presence on our campus versus being hidden right yes I'm assuming is going to absolutely help fulfill and and keep your mission going right I mean ideally I think we really want to turn this into an educational center I mean we're hoping that this building has a few spaces that we can still build into and and they have some branches onto it so it's definitely possible that someday we may be able to become sort of the pull up the school bus and we're the educational center and we may even have a seating area for students to come in and learn and then see the windows and all of their animals out front so that is the hope that we will become an education will enter custody yeah exactly right what tell me about the services here what what you do you know every day you're you're busy from Sun up to Sun yeah you know seven days a week it seems like with with your clients and your definitely animals that you're caring for definitely so I'm kind of again it can be broken up almost into that threefold mission really the biggest thing we do is obviously offer medical care to sick and injured wildlife and so the public good Samaritans can bring in any sick or injured wildlife or or orphaned wildlife native species and bring them in for medical attention and that medical attention can prove can be anything from just some warmth and some food to imaging so x-rays ultrasound CT even to surgery and da Skippy we have all sorts of options available to us because we are part of a teaching hospital and the nice thing is the teaching hospital recognizes that we are offering some important services to the public into the community and so they're very supportive of some of the endeavors that we have and then also training the students and then doing the outreach because those are really services that we do provide we provide that education to students that they may not get sorry hazel um otherwise even in other veterinary schools because it's it's quite unique what we have here and then obviously offering some of that outreach education to to the local community really being able to tell them what we have what they can do what we can do all sorts of things like that you were gracious enough to I know it's a lot to bring the birds and the turtle and the owl with you today you do help all kinds of animals tell us about some of the patients that you have I'm assuming the four here were patients at one time and you've integrated them into your outreach program but if some of the other clients that you have here boy we've had a lot of interesting things coming over the year I mean we've the stories on it you know obviously in the social media feeds we've had snowy owls and we've had one this year we've had one previous years but last summer we had an otter which was a lot of fun in there they're tricky I know they can get out of almost anything so they're kind of difficult to treat and to house but aughter did really well yeah yeah and then we had your Pelican which was it was quite a story because I was actually giving a lecture to the Wildlife students and I happen to mention because people keep telling me this I happen to mention that we very rarely get pelicans specifically those words came out of my mouth and within an hour we had a Pelican the white pelican oh wait yeah okay yeah it's an American white pelican the brown ones stay mainly coastal these guys do actually have a Flyway through Illinois so people don't realize we do get pelicans here unfortunately we we got this one for some unfortunate reasons so this one and five others actually were shot unfortunately the five others did pass away this wasn't the only survivor but thankfully this one was brought to us and after a fair amount of medical care that include treatment for both the gunshots and for subsequent lead poisoning um this guy did great and we released him back out into the wild which was awesome yeah it was actually a story we covered it was a happy it was great and we don't always get that happy ending unfortunately with with how much trauma sometimes these guys go through but to be able to see that and to be able to share it with the community has been great what are the main issues that you see with the animals that are coming in is it is it human related is it environmental is it a mixture of both you're both looking at gets tricky right because it is usually human related yeah I mean and that's that's that's a big part of what we're doing is trying to we love that our students and our volunteers get the education in the cases come in we obviously love the program and we're gonna keep it going for as long as we can but any chance we get to prevent that animal from walking in the door we're gonna take it so we like to talk to people about especially when we do outreach about how they ended up with us and then also give them a takeaway on what they could have done to potentially prevent that animal from coming in so say Oden was he was in his first year which most red-tailed Hawks don't make it their first year very small percentage make it through and a lot of times it has to do with their inability to hunt well but it's also because there are food shortages so we'll say the students or the public when we go out that you know if you have a cat leave it inside because when you have that cat out in the outdoors it's taking away from the food supply that Oden here might you know Mike yeah eat so we just try to spread that message a little bit the things that we can do and you see a lot of those yeah yeah definitely yeah and I'd say yeah unfortunately the biggest the biggest reason we see them is us and it's not always directly so like she said cats and dogs that's an indirect cause from us we are letting them outside we see a lot of window strikes so again it's not that we mean for things to happen but these birds didn't evolve with Windows they didn't evolve with cars out there so they don't really know how to navigate kind of the urban environments that they have here and so we we unfortunately see a quite a bit of those instances now there are bits and pieces of things that we can do like keeping our animals and doors like actually designing some of your windows so birds can actually see them and they won't fly into them but then we do actually get a few thankfully not a large number of direct causes from us so gunshot wounds poisonings things like that that is is quite sad and it's something that we do have to deal with and it's a good training opportunity for our students but it is some of the sadder cases that we see speaking of students you have a very populous student volunteer program which really helps this mission to go but tell me about the the students that are involved in the clinic yeah so I think our student are our volunteer program is kind of twofold and I'll talk about kind of our clinic stuff and then and then the outreach program but we take veterinary students so in their first through third years as well as undergraduate students here at the University of Illinois and even from their first year they can choose to volunteer in the clinic and so like I said previously we have about a hundred student volunteers and they are kind of subdivided into teams usually eight to ten teams that are then led by team leaders who are usually upperclassmen that have had year two of experience here in the clinic and and when I say the clinic is student or on it it truly is and so when we get patients who come into the clinic so a local Good Samaritan drops off say a bird of some sort the teams actually will intake those patients they will triage them so provide the medical care do all their kind of physical exam things and then they will develop diagnostic plans they will develop medical plans they will bring them to x-rays all sorts of things like that and then they even get to be involved with the procedures on those animals and surgery and so we really try to have them involved in every step of the process of treating these animals and I think that's very important because a veterinary care is veterinary care it doesn't really matter if you're doing it on wild patients versus a dog versus a cat the medicine is the same and so these students here don't have to be interested in pursuing wildlife medicine or zoo medicine when they grow up they can want to do dogs and cats they can do horses they can do whatever they want but they get the best hands-on experience here that are is gonna benefit them kind of throughout their whole career which is really great and you see it as a huge benefit as well yeah yeah we we have also undergraduates all the way up to third year students and many of our volunteers are both involved in the medical side and ours we do offer a program for some individuals that they would rather just work with our animals in the sense that they take care of them and they train them and they when you talk about hands-on and they do everything it's the same on our end they do everything I mean they're the ones cleaning the enclosures they're the ones that are making up their meals and and providing them with nutrition so they're getting a lot of husbandry a lot of skills they're they're getting a lot in behavior and training and so it's really it's not just learning how to go out in public and speak to people which is actually a really important part of veterinary medicine but it's also just getting this relationship like you mentioned we're very close to these animals because they take care of them day in and day out so it takes a lot of dedicated individuals to make it happen so we have about 25 on our side what's your favorite part of working with young - I think honestly my favorite part is just seeing them grow so yeah definitely when they come into the clinic especially if they start as an undergraduate student or a first-year students they don't have a lot of experience which is fine sometimes we get people who come in who have never touched a bird or a reptile or something like that and so they come in thankfully very open minded and very willing to learn and very passionate about what they do and to see them go from that stage to being a second or third year student and being able to run the show basically is is amazing to see and it's it's very rewarding honestly for us as the veterinarians who kind of are overseeing everything means we're doing something right yeah so they can kind of take over the show for us I think they do yeah it's great they come up with their own ideas new concepts and it's just wonderful to see I mean it's a really nice development process you can see right hand in front of you yeah so I lived in the country how many years still do and as I was walking the treeline a fawn was right there I kind of panicked for a moment because I thought mommy had left the fawn I immediately get on the horn to my neighbor who's you know as a country woman who's been there all of her life and I said oh my gosh what should I do and she said leave it yeah don't touch it mommy's not far away advice to people if they come across wildlife what should they do actually we had that exact story last week I got a message from somebody that there was one in the lawn and later on that day they stayed patient was a hot day and they saw the mom and they took the best picture of this baby running after the mom as she came into the yard so it does happen like that but yeah we have a lot on the website yeah so our website is great and so really the nice thing about our website is is we have a little tab up there that says what do you do if you find wildlife and not only that but then it's subdivides it into different species because it is gonna be different depending on if you find a Cottontail bunny or a bird or an opossum or something like that because in most instances just like the fawn you leave them there the adults know better they don't want to see us they don't want to be seen by us and so there kind of hiding off in the peripheries or they're leaving for dinner or lunch or something like that they'll come back and so those are those situations are very different than the times or you actually do you have an injured animal and so so we want to obviously take in those injured and sick critters but we want to give the young ones the best chance at survival and that's usually with mom and dad yeah absolutely yeah and really when we go out for outreach we do a lot of speaking with children and we're always you know delivering that message that leave it be where it's at because children especially you know if they were to go after a wild animal that could cause an injury so I'm gonna really try to make sure that there was an adult and that they can observe what the adult from a distance to make sure the animals safe as we wrap up our our visit here at the at the wildlife clinic we have a couple minutes left yeah final words that we can give to our viewers out there if they do have questions you mentioned the website there's a lot of valuable information there maybe just a some advice or something that we can give to our viewers to leave them with about this wonderful clinic here I just I think it's it's a real blessing to have something like this in the community because it's just something that a lot of areas don't have but it's really important for the general public just to kind of observe and know what's around them and how they can help improve the situation like I said we want to keep our cases going but anything we can do to keep them from walking in the door any help that they can give us in that area would be very very grateful for that you know yeah so definitely I mean a reminder to that that we are a non-for-profit or going to say yeah so so our entire operating budget so the medications the the food the supplies for the clinic comes from donations grants things like that and fortunately grants are becoming fewer and far between uh-huh oh yeah and so we depend heavily on the public for donations to actually provide care and so we do have this lovely facility that the University helps us with but really everything else we really have to fundraise for or accept donations with creators coming in and so kind of the reminder that that we provide this care basically free of charge but but any donations small large does not matter can really help us out a great deal and they can actually see that that kind of giving link both on our website and on our Facebook page which we are very active on sharing kind of cases and things that come through the clinic um they can always visit us there wonderful doctor reach dr. Coleman and all the wonderful animals that you corralled up to be with us today thank you for for taking the time to share with us your story and also to invite to invite us into your wonderful new clinic that I can't wait to show the day we're joining and thank you for joining us for this episode of the paw report on the road at the University of Illinois at the wildlife clinic thanks for joining us I'm your host Kelly Goodwin we'll see you next time dave's decorating center is a proud supporter of the paw report on wtiu dave's decorating center features the mohawk smartstrand silk forever clean carpet Dave's decorating Center authorized Mohawk color Center in Charleston the paw report on wiU is supported by rural cane America's farm and home store livestock feed farm equipment pet supplies and more you can find your store and more information regarding royal king a troll King com additional support for the paw report on wiU is brought to you by viewers like you thank you [Music]