New X-Ray machine expected to improve animal care at BC Wildlife Park

KAMLOOPS – It’s been on their wish-list for years, and now the Fawcett Family Wildlife Health Centre at the BC Wildlife Park has its own Animal X-Ray machine.

The machine is about the size of a laptop, which means it’s portable and easy to use.

Animal Care Manager Tracy Reynolds expects the X-Ray machine to improve animal care significantly.

“We see between 300 to 500 animals in our Wildlife Health Centre alone and a lot of those have broken bones and other ailments that now we can better diagnose with an X-Ray machine,” she said.

The BC Wildlife Park’s Executive Director Glenn Grant says the park has been wanting an X-Ray machine ever since the Health Centre was built five years ago.

The park really began pushing its fundraising campaign after a small bobcat was brought in with a broken leg.

“When we were sedating him, crating him, taking him into a veterinary clinic at Oriole Road Clinic to get those X-Rays done, it was really invasive and uncomfortable for the cat,” Grant said. “So, we thought, you know what? We really should be more focused on getting the equipment ourselves.”

Grant says the park raised around $45,000 for the X-Ray machine, which has been in use since Sunday.

Animals will no longer need to be sedated and travel elsewhere to get an X-Ray, which can cause the animals stress.

“Also, we would choose which ones we were going to take in for an X-Ray,” Reynolds said, “so there are some animals where we suspect it’s a fracture, but we’ll just wait and see how it heals kind of thing, where now we’ll know the answer right away.”

The X-Ray machine is small and portable, which means anytime a large animal is in need of an X-Ray, the machine can be brought out into the park.

“We’ll also be able to do routine X-Rays now,” Reynolds said. “We had to sort of be more frugal with our X-Rays, while now we can do more routine X-Rays and it will help us better care for the animals out in the park.”

The Fawcett Family Wildlife Health Centre is the only full rehab centre in the Interior, so the tiny little X-Ray machine is expected to get plenty of use.

“I don’t know if we’ll use it daily,” Reynolds said, “but we’ll certainly use it several times a week for sure.”