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Medical Care Training - Ostrich

When people visit an animal facility they usually get amazed by the ostriches. Their size, their long legs, how powerful they are and how fast they can run. People talk about the big eyes and the small brain that they have but they do not realise how smart they are.
When we talk about blood drawing, cleaning a wound, putting stitches or giving some treatment to an ostrich, it usually comes to our mind that anesthesia or restraining will be needed due to their size and power.  However, as trainers, we think on how to condition them to accept and cooperate with us during these kind of procedures without being submitted to stress and further consequences.
We started training some husbandry behaviors to make our daily routine easier such as recall, target, stationing, laying down or shifting them from point A to point B. Eventually, we started building a good relationship and trust that allowed us to go further with our training. Soon we jumped into some medical training like cleaning wounds, drawing blood and taking medicine.
One day, when he was a grown up,the ostrich needed a routine blood test and everyone wanted to restrain him. The people that was involved on his training trusted the power of training, trusted the animal and trusted the teamwork that we were doing for a very long time. The result could have not been any better!
Instead of seeing the typical scenario in which an ostrich is restrained on the ground or is asleep due to the anesthesia, he was actually responding to the training!
On the video you can see the lay down (when he was still a baby), blood drawing and why training this was so helpful.
Never underestimate any behavior that you want to train or you have already trained. You never know when you will need the animal to cooperate with you to avoid stress and unwanted situations.

Enric training with Willy

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