With great emotion, the families who owned the Chamuscado and Spirit horses received on their premises the two horses that suffered severe burns in the forest fires that affected the central area of the country in February. Almost three months of intensive care was required for the animals to heal their wounds and generate new skin.

Despite the efforts of the team of specialists of the Hospital for Older Animals of the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences of the University of Concepción, Chillán headquarters, and the staff of the Army’s veterinary service who remained for two months settled in the veterinary compound, Chamuscado suffered various complications and completely lost vision in his right eye. On the other hand, Spirit had serious burns on his face and must use protection.

“We are delivering their owners ‘Chamuscado’, which was a horse that suffered 80% of burns during the fires; and in a very collaborative work between the army, the University of Concepción, the SAG, the veterinary college and other institutions, today he can go with his family already almost completely recovered. I think this is finally a symbol that when institutions are able to unite with good purposes we can do great things, and ‘Chamuscado’ has undoubtedly been reformed into an emblem of collaborative work and we hope that this experience allows us to get a lot of learning, not only in protocol, which is important. For this we are already working with the universities.”

The recovery of these Chilean horses were the result of combined efforts of a set of public and private organizations, convened by the team of disaster management in the animal dimension, led by the Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG) and the National Service of Prevention and Response to Disasters (SENAPRED) of Ñuble.

“We tried, during all this time, not to lose that instance of communication with them, with their owners, and also to be telling them what conditions they were in, how they were recovering, how they were going to get home later, and this is the final stage where all the institutions that participated in this are proud to be able to deliver them in good conditions.”

For his part, Colonel Fernando Herrera of the National Defense of the Ñuble Region stressed the importance of closing a cycle with the discharge of “Chamuscado.” 

“In this I want to highlight a common purpose where different strata, academics, government institutions, various structures, NGOs, worked in alignment to help the community in the face of the emergency. Today we set a milestone: that is the discharge of this horse ‘Chamuscado’, which returns to its commune…”

The recovery process required about 5 kilometers of bandages, a thousand liters of serum for hydration therapy and up to 100 liters of serum per day for the washing of each animal, in addition to numerous medicines, supplies and food. These were possible to pay for, thanks to the contributions of resources by various public bodies and donations from private institutions and individuals, administered by the Veterinary Medical College.

The Director of the Main Hospital of the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences of the UdeC Campus Chillán, Dr. Ignacio Cabezas, described the treatment and explained that: “it was a very relevant and interesting work for two reasons. The first one is that we were able to generate a work team in conjunction with SAG and with the Army. This allowed us to have a work base that made it possible to recover patients who were not at fault. Just as we had the loss of people,  here were also animals that unfortunately died, and we only had the possibility of saving a very limited group of productive animals.”

In total, seven horses were treated in the UdeC enclosure, with various damages as a result of the forest fires that spread between the Maule and La Araucanía regions. All the animals recovered; six of them returned to their farms of origin and only the restless mare remains until the complete recovery of his wounds is achieved.

Source: Portalagrochile.cl