ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of pharmacological agents and recommended protocols for sedation, immobilization or anesthesia of Rangifer. Safe restraint and immobilization require knowledge of reference values for vital signs and when corrective measures should be initiated due to critical levels. Fear, chasing, physical restraint and/or chemical immobilization will elicit an acute stress response that can compromise the physiologic homeostasis of an animal and cause distress. Causative factors of increased body temperature include fear, metabolic heat generated by excessive muscular exertion, high ambient temperature, sun exposure and interference with normal thermoregulatory mechanisms by anesthetic drugs. K. A. Ryeng et al. found that that the method of drug administration significantly influenced the effective immobilizing doses of medetomidine-ketamine in captive, semi-domestic Norwegian reindeer. M. Nieminen et al. used detomidine alone at doses ranging from 0.04–0.1 mg/kg to 0.1–0.3 mg/kg for sedation or immobilization of 126 semi-domesticated reindeer and 15 wild forest reindeer.
