Premature cria and unhelpful weather

Some of my alpaca breeder colleagues are so good at keeping up with their blogs! I try and follow your example but don't do very well.

I wrote a blog entry last Thursday but didn't get round to posting it. It was all about shearing and how I never get the timing right with the weather. This is important for us because our barn isn't big enough to accomodate all our alpacas for shearing in the rain. SO I delayed our shearer 3 weeks ago as the weather was so wet and cold and then it immediately turned tropical aargh! Since then the weather has done another u-turn and I was umming and aahing about when to shear a very-nearly-due pregnant female, when on Saturday morning my husband found a new shivering cria in the long grass and the rain. 10 months and 3 weeks and weighing in at 6.4 kilo this little female was floppy-eared premature.

We spent from Saturday until yesterday getting her going and, sure enough, the weather has been EXTREMELY unhelpful. Mum doesn't like going in the barn and so it's been a balancing act between keeping the cria dry and warm and having them both outside as much as possible.

At first the cria wasn't strong enough to stand and feed from mum on her own so we started by milking mum to get some colostrum and then continued by holding the cria up while she fed directly from mum every 2 hours. The cria has gradually gained in strength and is now thermoregulating (as much as possible in these conditions), feeding well and putting on weight.

We don't have any plasma in stock so couldn't do an oral transfer in the first 6 hours as people suggest, however I'm hoping that we got enough of mum's colostrum into her in the first few hours to have an effect. She certainly had plenty of colostrum during the first 24 hours so fingers crossed we don't see any infections appear. I spoke to the vet about the possibility of performing an intra-peritoneal plasma transfer but as the cria seemed to be improving, putting on weight, had a normal temperature and the procedure itself can be risky we decided it wasn't worth it.

Phew. What a lot of work. I hope the next birthing is easier.

As for the weather. We're booked in for shearing on the 12th June so I fully expect the heavens to open for biblical floods that day..

Nematodirus, favourite injection sites and other stories

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.

No more whinging the sun is out! Plus very pregnant lady chases fox with mop (she needs alpacas)!

Both I and the alpacas are MUCH happier in this bright, frosty weather. I get quite proud of them out in their paddocks with their frosty backs on very cold mornings when other animals have to be tucked up in barns. A couple of neighbours in my village have expressed concern about them being out overnight in these temperatures, giving me a great excuse to talk about the superior qualities of their fleece!

The only inconvenience is having to keep the water from turning to solid blocks of ice within 5 minutes, not something I'm always successful at but it's really noticeable how much more alpacas drink when the grass is frosty and they have to rely on hay.

On other matters, I find that it's this time of year that foxes start to get bolder, I guess it's down to pack dispersal, cold weather and, a bit later on, cubs to feed. My (very) pregnant friend had to chase away a young fox from her chickens today. Bare foot (literally) and (as I said) pregnant, my friend went in fast pursuit of said fox wielding her kitchen mop, but she had to get within 2 feet before it released the hen and went off in search of another. She then grabbed an air rifle and ran (sort of) around the garden shooting into the air, screaming and yelling to scare the fox away. Fox eventually went off, hens were retrieved from various hiding places, and waters remained unbroken. All is calm now. Apparently the incident has been captured on their CCTV and I am currently begging her husband to post it on facebook.

Of course what my friend needs is alpacas to guard her chickens from the foxes...

More Mud and Motivational Issues

I'm finding this winter harder than the last couple, the constant half-light and rain is sapping my motivation. Does anyone else have to give themselves pep talks and motivational speeches before they venture forth at this time of year? Although the snow and ice of the last couple of winters was a pain at least it was accompanied by bright days. But it won't last forever - the snowdrops are out where we are (Wiltshire) and the daffs are coming up.

My difficult female and I (see previous posts) are being kind to each other for the moment. I'm hand-feeding her Camelibre outside of the pen and while I'm doing this giving her TTouches down her neck and body. She's very happy to be hand fed so I'm using this to my advantage and seeing if I can condition her into associating being handled with good things (i.e. food). Doing this outside of the pen instead of inside really works as she is free to escape and so consequently does not feel threatened. I'm hoping that in a few weeks someone will be able to stand with a feed bucket while I pop an injection into her side. I'll also try using a neck wrap on her at some stage to see if that helps keep her calm. Putting her in a small pen definitely did not work as she felt very threatened and I received several showers of spit.

Lastly, I have a couple of lovely knitter friends who are doing sterling work with the yarn produced from the 2011 shear. I, too, attempt a few knits but the results are not as fabulous as these ladies can produce. They are knitting for my first craft fayres that are coming up in March and April (including the Fibre Arts Village at Futurity with other SWAG members) which is really great. I find myself staring obsessively at other peoples knitted clothes for ideas. Is this normal?

Getting Stuck in Mud

Our paddocks slope gently (well, mostly gently) down to a canal and we have good drainage, so we don't have a problem with boggy ground in wet conditions. However no-one can escape mud at the moment. This is our second winter keeping livestock and as last year the ground was frozen solid for about 4 months we were not prepared for the skid-fest conditions that met us this weekend when we tried to drive a load of hay down to our shed. I watched as my husband (looking resigned to his fate) and dog (looking alarmed) skidded out of control in the 4x4 past the shed and headed for the ditch at the bottom of the slope. Luckily he managed to steer into a post and his fall was stopped. How stupid of us to try and drive on the steepest bit of paddock in these wet conditions.

Then, of-course, is started to rain and we quickly had to drag a ton of hay in bags up the slope to the shed. Joy.

We abandoned the pick-up. We had two choices - wait for better conditions (possibly in spring?) or get our next door neighbours JCB to pull the van out and have swathes of pasture carved up as a result. However it all came good in the end as the following morning we were blessed with the first (and possibly only) hard frost of the winter. The pick-up sailed up the hill without a care in the world. Phew.

More frosts please.

The Art of Patience

After the last 4 weeks of being spat and moaned at and not being able to provide an A, D & E injection I finally got fed-up and contacted Julie Taylor-Browne of http://www.carthveanalpacas.com/camelidynamics.html for some advice about my almost-berserk female (see previous posts). I felt that I was just not making much progress and was getting disheartened. Two years ago I went on Julie's 2 day Camelidynamics introduction course where I learnt (amongst many other things) about the benefits of using a body wrap on a nervous animal. This is when you tie a long bandage in a specific way around the body to form a sort of "hug" that releases happy endorphines and helps to calm an animal. Temple Grandin uses a similar technique with her "squeeze chute" for cattle (see http://www.grandin.com/ and her book "Animals in Translation"). HOWEVER I don't fancy tying said bandage around this girl when I'm on my own in a remote location, she's big and strong and angry. However Julie has come up with an apparently very effective alternative - the neck wrap. So I've bought one from her website (it has a handy clipping mechanism) and will let you know how I get on.

After reading the articles on her website I now realise that I need to go at this girl's pace not mine, i.e. the learning process may take months and I need to give her plenty of time to assimilate and learn new behaviours. In the mean-time I need to get some A,D & E into her without having 2 men sit on her while I do it. So I'm going to get her into a mini-pen we have on-site and distract her with food, perhaps then I'll be able to lean through the pen bars and pop a quick injection into her shoulder skin without having to provide any further restraint (another Julie-tip). At the moment I can hold her round her neck happily while she's eating and feel along her body - I'm hoping food will provide not just a good distraction while I'm performing nasty husbandry procedures, but also a useful tool to help her learn to relax and behave calmly.

Also, everyone has started eating hay like it's going out of fashion. I've got some particularly sweet and green stuff this year. I often fancy a mouthful myself now the weather has turned inclement.

Camel Whispering Part 3

Well, the A,D & E injection attempt on the difficult girl didn't go as well as the lambivac injection had done previously. Instead of just myself and my husband I had a few other helpers that day and it was too difficult to keep everything and everyone calm. We only managed to get 1ml into her and then I called a halt as she began to shake and bounce around and required the force of more than one person to hold her.

So I've decided to work with her 3+ times a week on my own for another 3 weeks before trying to inject her again. I'm being very patient and just standing with her in the pen, putting my arm out and doing some gentle TTouches and holds on her neck. No spitting at all today!