Bald Eagle Saved by a Skin Graft from a Fish

This summer, a bald eagle in northwestern Wisconsin took flight after a long rehab for a leg injury. The key to the bird’s recovery was a first-of-its-kind skin graft treatment normally used for humans. The skin came from a North Atlantic cod.

The injured raptor was brought to the Winged Freedom Raptor Hospital in Spooner, WI in September 2024. She had been found at a campground with a gaping injury on its leg.

“It was horrible,” veterinarian and hospital founder Kim Ammann tells Wisconsin Public Radio. “It had been open and exposed to air and bugs and bacteria at least a week, if not longer. She was dying.”

Although Ammann treats about 200 birds a year, including around 75 bald eagles, she wasn’t sure how to treat such an extensive wound. She found Kerecis, an Iceland-based company that makes tissue regeneration products from fish skin. The treatment is mostly for humans but the company had developed a veterinary version, though it had not been used on an eagle before. (Eagles happen to eat fish, but then again so do humans.)

After hearing of the Wisconsin eagle’s plight, Kerecis provided the treatment for free.  Ammann named the bird Kere – a nod to the company – and then applied a fish-skin patch on the wound. Atlantic cod skin is used because it is compatible with human skin and has a low risk of viral transmission. It’s compatible with eagles too, apparently.

The patch, looking like a fishnet stocking, formed a structure for tissue to regenerate around. “It brings all the nutrients and structure in for her own skin cells to then creep in,” Ammann says. It took about ten months of treatment and rehab before Kere was ready to return to the wild.

At the end of June, Kere was released from a nearby soccer field. She soared off, owing her recovery in no small part to a fish. “It was a mixed blessing for me, I was very fond of her. She was so tolerant of everything that we had done,” says Ammann. “There were some tears.”

For a bird doctor, those are good tears. Amman says she has since used the fish-skin graft on smaller birds and with similar success.

Photo credit: Winged Freedom Raptor Hospital via Facebook