Successful Corneal Ulcer Treatment on a GHO!

From Blackland Prairie Raptor Center

For today's Fix-em Fridays, we share patient 24-0048. This great-horned owl arrived with some retinal damage, and a large corneal ulcer covering 1/4 of its eye.

Corneal ulcers are like scrapes and scratches on the outer layer of the eye. This is painful and can impair vision. We immediately started this owl on anti- inflammatories and antibiotics to help the epithelial cells repair.

After 24 days of medications to help heal the ulcer, we are happy to share that this patient was placed into an outdoor enclosure today! Boy was this owl one happy individual! It immediately flew to a perch and did all it could to avoid our team!

Tomorrow we will place it in our large flight enclosure to allow it to rebuild its flight muscles so it can be strong enough for release!

You can see the small ulcer circled. We use a stain that coats the ulcer allowing us to track its progress. This was stained this past Wednesday

Today, we could not see an ulcer at all!

Finally back outside enjoying the weather!