Paul Reynolds, [16 Apr 2025 at 21:02:23]: Good evening, everyone. A lion question: Today our practice darted two male lions with 10 mg medetomidine and 200 mg ketamine each. Both were reversed in the crate before transport with 3 ml yohimbine / atipamezole mix IM. They are the same age. Lion 1 got up in the crate during transport, Lion 2 slept during transport. When they arrived approximately 2 hours later at the destination, Lion 1 went to sleep again. Lion 2 got out of the crate and is still awake. It has been 4 hours now and Lion 1 has even been prodded but does not get out of the crate or wake up. Both lions were darted two months ago without any problems. Blood was taken, clinical pathology analysed, and both were healthy. Any advice please? Could ivermectin in the food for cause this picture? I have never experienced something like this. Thanks in advance Bart Gazendam, [17 Apr 2025 at 06:22:34]: Paul, I feel that the IM availability of that mixture is very very low. In addition, I have found that the concentration/quality of the mix fluctuates. I have had lions not wake up with it at all - I gave them a bit of Antisedan and they wake up beautifully. We have switched to using the new Wildlife Pharmaceuticals atipamezole and haven’t experienced any issues since. Re-appearance of symptoms could be due to the low dose of atipamezole (only 6 mg on 10 mg of medetomidine) and relatively short half-life of yohimbine (2-5 hours).
