Kitchen table surgery, plenty of meal worms and visits from her 'husband' helped a Cayuga duck recover from a nasty neck injury.
A ‘feisty and funny’ duck has been shortlisted for a national award after she defied the odds to recover from a nasty fox attack.
Mother Duck is the treasured matriarch a flock of Cayugas, but when her East Sussex owners found her with a horrendous gash to her neck they prepared for the worst.
The Colley family sought the help of Westpoint Farm Vets when they found their stricken bird, before bandaging her neck and held her, expecting her to slip away quietly.
However, the determined duck kept flapping her wings and protesting their efforts to keep her still, so her owners contacted the vets again and they agreed to conduct surgery on the bird.
The kitchen table served as an operating table when time was of the essence. Credit: PDSA
Her wound turned out to be more serious than they imagined, her throat had been torn open, but the surgery went ahead for two hours on the kitchen table of the Colley’s cottage. She was sewn up, resembling a ‘frankenduck’ with a 90 degree bend to her neck, and she was not out of the woods.
Mother Duck was kept in the bath for a week, enabling the Colleys to provide round-the-clock care, but she refused to eat.
A week passed before she pecked at a few crushed meal worms before she was moved outside to continue her rehabilitation in a separate pen. Daily visits from her ‘husband’ duck seemed to aid her recovery and the doting drake sat by her enclosure for hours at a time.
It was a long flight to recovery, but months later you’d never know the plucky duck had suffered a life-threatening injury.
Terrier Trinny was left on death’s door after a terrifying attack. Credit: PDSA
Mother Duck is among six pets shortlisted for the PDSA’s Pet Survivor of the Year award.
The finalists include a fox terrier called Trinny who was left at death’s door after an attack but fought to live another day, and a cat called Jacob, who overcame a potentially deadly combination of a serious abdominal infection and pneumonia.
Courageous cocker spaniel cross Custo, a puppy farm survivor named Milo and a tenacious cat named Woody are also shortlisted for the charity honour.
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