Friday, March 23, 2012
What could be wrong with our Alpaca?
Akianna, healthy and strong
Akianna, our black gorgeous Suri Alpaca had her cria September 25, 2011, a medium rose gray apalooza boy. We named him Apache because of the "sweater" he is wearing! She was a healthy mother but not too much into caring for her cria compared to the other dam Twilight who had her cria on the same day.
About by the end of November we realized, that she was not as perky as the other female alpacas. She moved slower, it took her longer to get on to her 4 legs and she didn't seem to be too enthusiastic about reaching the fresh food we provided. She had froth around her mouth almost every morning we came to the barn and she seamed depressed. We fed her Probiotics for a while - no real change around her mouth, but there were a few days we she seemed to be better in between some days where she had more foam.
Around Christmas we realized that Apache was nursing also from Twilight which we tried to interrupt, but slowly but surely we thought that it was a blessing to have such a great foster mother in Twilight and that it was THE advantage for both Alpacas, Akianna and Apache.
After another few weeks we had some blood work done on her - no real results. "We could give her one shot of Antibiothiks", our vet said. After 2 weeks of no change: "Well lets give her another one".... Then I took some fecal sample to a lab and then I heard this from our vet: "Well she could have SOME worms, let's give her some anti worm injection"...still no obvious change in our Suri Alpaca.
Then we decided we had to take more actions to get her back to her strength and health and we took her in to our vet's clinic for an x-ray and ultrasound because he said that she might have a herniated diaphragm - Really? no image displayed any of this diagnoses so no doubt we started to call the best vets in this country and everybody said, "No - not likely"!
A change in vets is approaching - obviously!
Apache now has reached almost 55 lbs and it was time to give Akianna a well deserved brake from her motherhood. We didn't count on the smartness of those animals, Akianna and Apache found every little loop hole to still provide mother's milk to him, no boundaries helped, he drank through Coral panels, fences, and he also discovered in no time some carelessly forgotten open gates and slipped through back to his warm mother's milk. Hope from now on we succeed with his weaning procedure and hopefully that will get her strength and weightgain up.
Next Tuesday our new vet is coming to our Alpaca Farm. We will start from point 0 again. Blood test, Fecal test, parasites? ...
I am pretty positive she will be healthy again. Everybody who reads that, please send her good energy for her recovery! Thank you!
We will keep you all posted what we find out.
Akianna and her cria Apache