A word of wisdom I didn't learn till it was too late re advice.
Recently we have seen a few problems resulting from dangerous/ inadvisable "help" being given on the forums.
While we most definitely encourage people to share experiences and offer advice we would ask you to bear in mind that these are not your animals and the people reading ( now and in the future ) may not be able to tell bad advice from good.
If that causes them to harm the animals involved the guilt will be on both parties but, more importantly, the animal may suffer or indeed die.
If in doubt it is wiser by far to point to someone better able to advise a safer solution - in most cases this may be a qualified herp vet. Be it by phone consult through their own local vet or by delaying treatment until a face to face where they can examine the animal in person.
In many cases this will fall under the guidelines of "Do no harm" rather than "try this it might work"
There are people on this forum I trust implicitly to give good advice in the case of emergency first aid ( Muddoc springs instantly to mind ) but in the end it is our individual duty as keepers to accept responsibility to our animals and take a realistic look at ourselves and say " I'm not certain I can do this safely"
99% of the problems we encounter are not emergencies - let's all try to do our part in preventing them turning into one.
dr del
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