Re GRHE

"riverman" wrote in message
...
SNIP
.. The feathers were all there, all
completely fine, but I had no idea how to harvest them from the rotting,
bug
infected meat. How do people do it?

--riverman



Feathers may be plucked, washed and dried, and then placed in appropriate
containers and labelled as required. Ensure there is no meat adhering to
the quills, if necessary, cut the base of the quills off. Often feathers
will be infested with feather mites, ( among other things). "nuking" ( 30
seconds, 600 watt, Microwave, and then freezing) after three days, thaw out,
wash and allow to dry thoroughly, will get rid of such pests.

For mammals of various types, one must be extremely careful when harvesting.
Some of these things are severely infected with a whole host of pathogens.
Fleas, ticks, and a number of other parasites can also be dangerous. If you
see carcases with stuff crawling all over them, then they are best left
alone.

Many parasites will leave a carcase as soon as it cools below a certain
temperature, or the circulation ceases. They immediately seek a new victim.
If you happen to be there at the time, even though you are not the best host
for the parasite in question, they may well jump on you, and you may end up
collecting far more than you bargained for.

Before collecting roadkill and such stuff, you should spend some time
researching the methods used, and if you don´t know exactly how to handle
any particular carcase then leave it alone. It is not worth getting the
plague or similar, merely to save a few cents on fly-dressing materials.

Having said that, the main reason for collecting such stuff is not to save
money, but to obtain quantities and ranges of material of first class
quality, which one is often unable to purchase.

In many places it is illegal to harvest certain things in any case. In
Europe, things like foxes, dead cats, etc etc at the roadside should also
be treated with extreme care. They may be infected with fox-band-worm,
rabies, weills disease, and a number of other nasties. In the tropics, this
is likely to be even worse. Simply touching some things is enough to
transfer some of these infectious diseases.

When harvesting roadkill, heavy rubber gloves, powerful disinfectant spray,
easily sealable and robust plastic bags are essential items. A good sharp
knife, a pair of heavy scissors, pruning shears ( for cutting wings off
etc), are also required.

When preparing such material, great care must be taken to avoid contact with
blood, saliva, brain matter,( often used for tanning) etc etc. These may all
be infected with various things. While there is a certain "biological
barrier" for some diseases, and you can not contract them from an animal,
even a badly infected example, there are plenty of pathogens for which the
barrier is more or less non-existent.

If you are bitten by either an animal "in extremis", or by any of the
parasites which may have been present, then visit a doctor immediately, and
tell him exactly what happened and how.

Before doing any of this, you should have current inoculations relevant to
your area for the common diseases like lockjaw, etc etc.

One should only harvest fresh kills. Everything else is at least unpleasant
and can be dangerous. In cold weather, and climates, stuff keeps a lot
longer. In hot weather, it may be only a matter of an hour or so before
things get "high". Also, there is often no way of knowing why the animal in
question died, while this may be of mild academic interest, finding out by
contracting rabies is not the best answer to such a question.

There are some articles here on the matter, and on preparing the results.

http://www.sexyloops.com/connorsmetre/grayling5.shtml

TL
MC