The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes by DVM Lucy H. Spelman Read Free Book Online Page A

animal—would require our complete attention for several hours, and we'd need most of the crew helping. But the 250-pound baby also needed us, and that meant getting close to her. Not a routine proposition.
    We elected to drop the water level in the baby's pool right away, so that we could perform a physical exam and give her fluids. Administering an electrolyte solution to her orally would at least reduce the risk of dehydration while we sorted out our options. As soon as the water level dropped to a few feet, staff climbed down into the pool and slowly gathered around Kayavak. She proved to be a compliant patient, allowing trainers to gently restrain her in their arms as they knelt in the water. I passed a flexible tube into Kayavak's mouth and then her stomach while Annelisa poured the fluids in, using a funnel.
    When we finished, the little whale swam away slowly. She'd been through a tremendous amount over the past twenty-four hours, and it seemed as if she would accept whatever we chose to do for her. We made tentative plans to repeat the calf's fluid treatments every three or four hours over the next day to maintain her hydration. This would give us time to assess why Immi had died and formulate a plan for Kayavak's nutrition.
    One of our options—seemingly the most straight-forward—was to jump into the business of making baby whale milk. Every mammal requires its own milk formula. These don't come standardized, and figuring out what works best requires some trial and error. We certainly could not use human, dog, or horse milk formula for a whale calf. Like all marine mammals, these little guys have a huge demand for calorie-dense, fat-rich milk. We might be able to use commercially available milk powders as a base, but we'd need to buy massive amounts and then figure out just the right mix. Or we could use what others had used to raise orphaned dolphins: heavy whipping cream blended with herring fillets.
    We got on the phone to search for more information and determine exactly what we'd need to pull this off. If we chose to pursue this course and raise the calf on formula, it would be a first for a beluga whale. The trick would be to formulate a whale milk “recipe” that would get the biggest caloric bang for our liquid buck. Rather than the ounces per day required by a human infant, we'd be dealing with whale-sized gallons per day! And she would need more all the time as she grew. I wondered if our industrial-strength blender was ready to go.
    Getting the milk into Kayavak posed even greater concerns. Even if we could teach this baby how to nurse from a bottle, we couldn't do it soon enough to get the calories she needed today, or even within several days. So we would have to start by placing the tube down her throat into her stomach and pouring the milk through a funnel, the same method we'd used for the electrolyte fluids. Annelisa and I didn't need to be involved—the technicians and trainers could do this step. But how often?
    The calf had been nursing from her mother every twenty minutes to one hour, and we couldn't come close to matching that frequency with stomach tubing. Realistically, we could tube-feed her three times a day. We also didn't know exactly how much she drank each time she nursed, though we guessed it must have been several ounces. This meant large volumes of milk—up to a gallon—would have to be delivered at each of the three feedings.
    We knew we could succeed with this method at the beginning. Kayavak had tolerated the earlier fluids just fine. But would the calf continue to cooperate, or would she begin to resist us? Would the stress of being handled create new problems? Pneumonia loomed as a possible complication of stomach tubing because we'd be putting such a large volume into her stomach each time. Whales breathe through a physically separate and protected blowhole. Even so, if we overfilled her stomach or she struggled during the tube-feeding process,