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Junk Food: Zoo vets save the life of a California condor chick whose parents had been feeding it a deadly diet of metal scraps, glass fragments, and other debris
by Brenda Posada
The California condor nestling brought to the Gottlieb Animal Health and Conservation Center on September 29, 2006, must have had a terrible tummy ache. Radiographic studies revealed it had a miniature landfill in its stomach: Bottle caps, shards of glass, pieces of plastic, and ammunition casings were among the nearly half pound of foreign objects Veterinary Surgeon Stephen Klause later removed from the bird’s gastrointestinal tract. The chick was lucky to be alive, according to Curator of Birds Susie Kasielke. “Any of these objects, particularly things like sheet plastic, can cause obstructions in the gut, which ultimately would be fatal,” she says. “Fortunately these guys are very resilient.”
The chick was the third to arrive at the Zoo in a similar state in the past two years. The first, which arrived in September 2003, was not so lucky. Its stomach had been perforated and could not be saved. “I’m amazed that he lived as long as he did with the kind of infection and problems that he was experiencing,” Kasielke says.
Last year, a condor chick brought in with a broken wing had, among other items, a record 35 bottle caps in its digestive tract. Surgeries to repair the wing and remove the debris were both successful, and the chick’s prognosis is excellent. Not coincidentally that chick, a male, was reared by the same parents as this year’s junk-food patient. And as is often the case with nutritional problems in human children, the parents were to blame.
“We’re not really sure why the parents are feeding this stuff to the chicks,” Kasielke says. “One of the theories is that in the wild, they would normally be seeking out fragments of bone as calcium sources for their chicks. We see that in captive birds, when they’re getting ready to lay eggs, they begin seeking around in their enclosure and picking up little pieces of bone—and other small white objects. We think that perhaps in the wild this is translated to these little bite-sized pieces of what we’re calling microtrash.” 
It’s the latest hurdle in the California condor’s epic conservation story. The total population of the species, once as low as 22, has climbed to more than 270 individuals. While that figure represents a remarkable achievement, when it comes to long-term survival of the species, the future is still uncertain. “To me the big lesson with this species has always been to never let it get this close to extinction because every decision we make is critical,” Kasielke remarks. “The smallest decision becomes a critical one when your population is so small.”
Addressing the dietary dilemma will require a multifaceted approach, involving nutritional, behavioral, and environmental factors. Among the efforts already underway are environmental clean-up of areas where condors roost; raising public awareness; provisioning wild condors with calcium in the form of bone fragments; and evaluating the birds’ diet and feeding patterns. Behaviorists are also examining methods of encouraging the birds to eat certain things and avoid others (and to avoid areas where they’re more likely to encounter and feed upon a hunter-shot carcass, and therefore be at risk for lead poisoning.) Kasielke adds, “One of the wild pairs that has been known to feed microtrash to their chicks has been brought into captivity to evaluate that behavior and to see, in a controlled situation, if there are ways to influence that behavior.”
While it’s not uncommon for birds to ingest small rocks and other debris, the amount of trash in these recent cases is what makes them unusual. Klause says, “If there were only one or two pieces of debris we wouldn’t be going in chasing them. It needs to be enough where we’re forced to go in and get them for the benefit of the bird, to outweigh the risks of surgery.”
For the chick that arrived in late September—a female known by her studbook number, 370—surgery was a two-step procedure, as microtrash was lodged in both her stomach and crop (part of the esophagus used for temporary food storage). “First we had to go into the abdomen in order to get into the stomach and remove all of the debris out of the stomach,” Dr. Klause explains. “Then from a different area we went into the crop and removed material that still remained.” The chick came through the operation with no complications and was eating on her own within 24 hours.
“She has a clean bill of health now,” Kasielke says, “she just needs to grow up.” The chick will grow up at the Zoo, where adult mentor birds will serve as role models. Once she gains the skills needed to survive in the wild—learning things like where to roost, and more importantly, what to eat—she’ll be released back into the wild, her Zoo interlude a distant memory.
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