One Day at a Time

I don't mean to offend anyone, but in my world, "vet" refers to veterinarians. There's a saying in DVM land that "real doctors treat more than one species." Tonight in Mini Vet School, we learned the truth of that.

One of the graduates of the University of Minnesota's College of Veterinary Medicine is the vet for Underwater Adventures at the "mall from hell," otherwise known as the Mall of America. He reported that their trout were dying because they were not spawning, and their eggs were essentially killing them.

So this vet and the director of surgery at the U of M teaching hospital and veterinary medical center, Dr. Bruce Novo, spayed the trout. Dr. Novo was our speaker tonight, and he showed us pictures of the fish surgery.

There is a substance that apparently will anesthetize fish, so they put a little of that in some water and ran it over the gills in much the same way doctors would put breathing tubes in mammals. They monitored the heart rate, and when the fish went too far into sleep, they'd run some fresh water in to dilute the anesthetic.

The pictures were very interesting, because the regular ovaries were miniscule next to the egg filled ovaries. You could really see why the eggs had to come out.

Apparently this had never been written about before, so you can run to your nearest copy of Exotic DVM and find the article Kizer, A; Novo, R Ovariectomy in Rainbow Trout for Prevention of Postovulatory Stasis 5.1 p.27 to read more about it.