I've been busy busy busy getting ready for Futurity which starts TOMORROW! I'm sharing a stand with some other ladies from SWAG in the new fibre arts village and I'm really excited to get some of my new products out on show, to learn new things and to immerse myself in all things alpaca for a couple of days (as if I'm not immersed enough already).
After a routine faecal test last month I found a low nematodirus count (of just 10 eggs per gram) in the girls I look after in another herd. They're not showing any clinical signs and are in excellent condition but my vet has told me to be careful of nematodirus, being insidious it can creep up quickly and cause problems. I only worm when necessary so as not to risk building up drug resistance (currently not more than once a year) so there were no issues treating with such a low egg count and I wanted to knock the nematodirus on the head at an early stage. So I gave the girls a course of dectomax (the recommended wormer).
My preferred injection site is the loose skin around the armpit (foreleg) area. I sometimes notice a small reaction after an injection - a small lump at the site which goes away after a while. Do others find this? Can anyone recommend any other good injection sites?
Treating for nematodirus, of course, involved injecting the tricky alpaca I've talked about in previous posts.
I've now built up a good rapport with this girl and I think if I had to treat her, say, for an eye infection, I may be able to do it as she lets me perform TTouches and generally poke and prod her while she has some feed. She won't let me inject her yet though and doesn't trust anyone else, which is flattering but impractical. I'm not risking the nematodirus so I asked two men to restrain her (it takes two to be safe) while I gave the injection. She wasn't too stressed and I think we just have to carry on doing this for now. In the mean-time I'll continue to work with her and perhaps one day she'll let me inject her on my own.
