Moving On

First, we cancelled the 2 shows we were going to go to this spring. Since we can't show Remington we only had Sommerfield to show. Maddie is old enough now, but has not had the necessary blood work for registry, and that cannot be done in time for the spring shows. We did not feel it worth taking just Sommerfield. Though we do plan to attend the Indiana show in early April. Victoria's first cria, Contessa, and Kateri's first cria, Princess, will be shown by South Haven Alpacas. We are very excited to see how they do!

The other thing we will do now is move Snowstorm, Sommerfield and Maddie into the small shelter (the "boy" barn). Many farms do separate the maiden females from the maternity ones. Sancha is due mid-April and I think Sancha would like some distance from the younger girls. Sommerfield appears very attached to her mom. She follows her around, and has tried to nurse. Sancha will spit her off though. Maddie at times follows Sancha around too, like she's her surogate mother. I can already see Sommerfield being a milk snatcher. And I worry if Sancha's cria is not strong from the start those 2 girls could push it around. So why risk that chance? We have the space to separate the 2 younger girls, where they will share a fence with the older girls so they are not so far away. We plan to make that change this weekend. Friday the vet comes for a visit so we were waiting until that is over. I will be gone for 2 weeks and it would be easier for J if the pregnant girls were together apart from the others so he can do a quick morning feeding of just the pregnant ones. We have openned up the fence to the new barn and pasture. I have been feeding the girls in that area, and I started a poop pile (I took a small scoop from the other pile and put it where I wanted it in the new area ;) ). I think this will be a fairly easy transition, but we will wait and see for sure.

We will be getting Maddie's blood drawn when the vet is here so that we can finalize her registation. We really want to show her, and while we would have loved to do so this spring, fall will have to do.

Theories

The predominent theory on what happened with Remington came from the previous owners in discussion with the vet who did the necropsy at Michigan State. The theory is that Remington at one point had an open wound on him. This is a likely senario given he had just been moved to a different farm, and being the new male he was low man in the pecking order. Males do fight and he could have gotten a wound. If he then rolled in infected feces, then the coccidia could have gotten into the wound, entered the blood stream and then the abdominal cavity. While this is not a common thing to happen (open wound and infected feces and happen to roll in it) it is plausible.

However it came about I can only imagine how painful it must have been for him to be so infected. It points to how stoic these animals really are and how important it is know your alpacas and to watch for any unusual behavior. Since he was not on our farm yet I cannot look back and try to pick out unusual behavior. I do not know if in retrospect there were signs. It is scary how this could happen and makes me more cautious with watching the behaviors of the ones on our farm.

Necropsy

We have the preliminary report from Michigan State University. The short version is that Remington was too sick to travel. He reportedly had abcesses in his lung and liver and mesentery (the covering of the intestines). In addition to fluid in his abdominal cavity. He tested positive to Coccidial Oocysts. The type of coccidia appeared to be Eimeria Puneonesis. They took additional tissue for culture, those results are not available yet.

I did some research on Coccidail Oocysts. More information can be found at: http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_coccidia.html
It is a single cell organism that works similar to worms but is not a worm. The cell takes home in the intestines where it releases sporozoites and multiplies in the intestinal cells. This then causes intestinal problems in the animal including diarrhea and possibly bloody stool. Often small animals become dehydrated. It is passes through fecal matter from an infected animal.

There are several different strains of Coccidia. The report indicates this one to be Eimeria punoensis. I could not find much information on the web about this strain in alpacas specifically. Though I did find an older post on alpaca nation regarding this:

http://www.alpacanation.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3237

“The type of coccidia alpacas get is eimeria. There are different strains of eimeria, stiedai, stizostedioni, punoensis, macusaniensis and a bunch of others.
E-mac is used because none of us can spell eimeria macusaniensis.
If a vet told any client that their alpaca had eimeria punoensis the owner would be certain it was fatal, so the vet will say coccidia.”

I tried to post a scanned version of the nescrospy report here but it was not the right kind of file to upload here (I am not computer literate enough, sorry!). I can type in part of the report. Though I will warn you it is medical in nature and I had to have J translate a lot of it for me (so much for all those anatomy classes I took).

Gross Description

The body of a 2.5 year old, 65.5 kg, intact, male, Alpaca of adequate nutritional and hydration states was examined. Autolysis was minimal to mild. The lungs were bilaterally and diffusely dark red to purple, wet and heavy. The left lung lobe had areas of linear, pale, tan, mottling throughout. The right lung lobe appeared most affected, with long dense strands of fibrin over the pleural surface. Also, multiple firm nodules were palpated throughout the parenchyma of the left lobe. On cut sections, the nodules had a dense pale tan fibrous capsule contained clotted blood, necrotic debris, and purulent material. These changes were not observed in the lesser affected left lung lobe. The mediastinal lymph node was markedly enlarged. The abdominal cavity contained approximately 1 liter of hazy, watery, red tinged, fluid. The liver had approximately 10-20, variably sized, transparent, fluctuant, and pedunculated structures that were attached to the capsular surface. On cut section, the structures contained dark brown to green necrotic debris and small amounts of pale yellow to white granular purulent material. The mesentery contained approximately 5-10 random, dark brown to black nodules, surrounded by dense fibrous tissue and filled with purulent material (similar to that observed in the lung and on the capsular surface of the liver). There were no other significant gross findings observed.

Gross Diagnosis

Lung: Severe (unilateral) fibrinous pleuritis with multifocal chronic pulmonary abcess formation
Liver: Severe chronic diffuse capsulitis with multifocal abcess formation
Mesentery: Chronic multifocal mesentery abscess formation
Mediastinal lymph node: lymphadenomegaly

Comments:

The lung changes observed were severe and chronic and predominantly isolated to the right lung lobe. These findings (including the liver and mesentery) are most suggestive of a systemic bacteremia/septicemic process with multi organ seeding and subsequent abscess formation. These lesions, combined with the stress of transport, may account for this animal's sudden death. Histopathology and additional laboratory tests are currently in progress. The findings will be reported in a forthcoming final report as soon as results are available.

My own comments:
While some of that report sounds pretty bad, keep in mind that alpacas are very stoic animals. They do not let on that they are ill, until it is really bad. In nature they are very vulnerable because they have few defenses (run or spit is about all they can do, they can stomp small animals). To show a predator that they are weak or ill would be a huge weakness, so their natural instinct is to hide any illness or weakness. Remington was not at our farm so I do not know what signs he may or may not have been showing.

I also want to point out that this report points to a chronic problem. Remington had not been agisted at the farm he was at for very long. It is possible that he was infected before arriving there. Had they kept up on regular veterinary care, the extent of the coccidia in Remington was likely too advanced to be treated by regular dosing. It is hard to know when this started, when he was infected, and even if the coccidia was what caused the multi organ problems. The tissue cultures may show additional information to help sort it out.

We did call the farm we were purchasing Remington from to let them know the results of the report. And we have notified the farm where Remington was being agisted at because of concern that other alpacas could have been infected. One positive is that Remington never did touch ground at our farm. Given his condition, had he survived the transport he could have infected the rest of our herd.

Rest in Peace

With heavy heart I post the surprising death of Remington. I had only met him two times. The first time when we decided that we wanted to purchase him. The second time was to transport him to our farm. He appeared fine when we loaded him in the trailer, and was ok when we checked on him mid trip. But when we arrived at our farm, he was dead.

We were so looking forward to showing him this spring (we already had him signed up in two different shows). We had built a barn specifically with him in mind. We were planning to bred him to Victoria this summer. All these things we had prepared for him with anticipation of his arrival at our farm. While we didn't know him well, we were excited to have him at our farm, and are devastated at his loss. He will be greatly missed, and never forgotten.



J has taken the remains to Michigan State University for a necropsy (autopsy). There are so many questions as to how this could have happened,we need some answers. Whatever the reason, at the very least we can use this as a learning experience. For now we are just taking each moment by moment as we try to feel our way through this surprising loss.

Finger Puppets

I knit some finger puppet alpacas out of alpaca yarn (sorry the picture is blurry):


I bought this alpaca yarn. Once we have yarn from our own alpacas I will make the puppets out of that. I plan to give these away to kids who visit the farm.

Boy's barn

Our current project has been putting up a shelter for Remington, which Snowstorm will share with him. We opted to use a kit, the Liberty shed from Lowes. We decided that was the best option for something that we could put up in the winter, is moveable, and could be put up rather quickly. Right now we really want to get Remington to our farm. We plan to show him this spring and need to work on halter training.


Front view:


Back view:


Closer up in back:


As you can see the girls barn is much bigger, but it also has more storage area (for hay and straw and feed, in addition to a med station).

This shed will be plenty big for Snowstorm and Remington and can hold additional males should we have some born this year.

Trailer

Here is a picture of the trailer that we purchased to haul the alpacas. Isn't it cute! J put in vents so that they have air movement. I need to get a picture of the inside of it yet. We transported Sancha, Sommerfield and Maddie with plenty of room to spare. I do not think we will have a problem with it being too small. We likely could fit in all 7 of our alpacas.

We got a scale and alpaca weights

Given vet scales and easily cost $600+ we were not eager to go out and spend that money, we didn't get a scale right away. But now that we have alpacas that are under a year old we do need to monitor their weight. And it won't be long until we have some cria who will need to be weighed.

So Saturday we set up the scale and put the alpacas on it. They do not like to be haltered! J was the lucky one to catch and halter them then pull them to the scale. I stood behind the alpacas and pushed their back hips into the scale.

Maddie weighed in at 66 pounds. She's 4.5 months old and appears to be a good weight for her size. She has a good spine score so she's a perfect weight for her frame.

Sommerfield weighed in at 88 pounds, which appears right on for her body frame (her spine feels like a 3). She's pretty big for her age, given that breeding is usually done when they hit 90 pounds, and she's almost there. We plan to wait until late summer to early fall to breed her. But she will be plenty big by then, and will be around 18 months old (most start breeding between 15 and 18 months depending on the alpaca, the bigger ones earlier as they are ready earlier). Also we noted when Sommerfield first came to our farm she was showing herself to all the alpacas (she didn't know if they were males or not). At less than a year she was already presenting as ready to breed. In the wild some male would have tried! But we don't have any able males near her so we will wait a bit.

Sancha is a spitter and spitted a few times as J, but did eventually get on the scale. She weighed in at 190 pounds. We knew she was a bigger than average alpaca (average is supose to be 150 pounds) because she is taller and has a bigger frame than our other females. She seems to be a perfect weight as her score (spine score) is right on.

Snowstorm would not cooperate and after much struggling we gave up. I would have predicted he was over 200 pounds (before we got the scale). But looking at him next to Sancha, I bet they are very close in weight (though that can be deceptive, as we will see with the later weigh ins). He is overweight as his body score was a 5 to start, is slowing going to a 4.

Victoria was a suprise, she looks big but I think it's more due to her very dense and long fiber. She weighed in at 142.6 pounds. I fully expected her to be above the 150 (thinking 170-180). We were off on her! She is a bit on the heavy side for her frame as her spine score is a bit higher than the 3 it should be.

Kateria, who we thought was so much smaller than Victoria weighed in at 142.8! They are almost the exact same weight. I'll have to see if I can get a picture of them together, because I swear Victoria looks heavier.

Pictures!

We borrowed a camera to get some pictures on this blog. I want to share my babies :)


The first time we met Maddie she was trying to hide between the other alpacas. She had no idea she was black and they are white and she was not hidden at all :)


Here Maddie is eating a leave, the silly goof. Oak leaves can be toxic to alpacas but only in huge qualtities, this one leaf will not hurt her.


I love the markings on her face, shows off her eyes.



This is Remington. He's a 1/2 brother to Maddie, and I do think their faces look a lot alike. Remington is not yet at our farm, we need to finish a shelter for him first. This picture was taken when we visited him at Autumn Alpacas (he belonged to KaSar farms but was agisting at Autumn Alpacas). We are excited to get him here soon.



Sommerfield is 9 months old. She looks a little bit chunky, but that is all fiber! Having been born in the spring she was not shorn so she has a bit more growth than the others. Sommerfield's fiber is nice and thick and has good crimp. We are waiting to see how her top knot fills in, but we do see a lot of cheek wool. Sommerfield seems to like the dirt (like Snowstorm - why is it always the white ones who like the dirt!). So she is a bit dirty, but inside the fiber it's nice and clean and white. Sommerfield is in the middle of a growth spurt so her back legs are longer than her front legs. As she grows that will even out. Her mom, Sancha has a very straight flat back, which we expect Sommerfield will have when she's done growing.



What a cute face! You can really see the cheek wool here.



This is Sancha. She is the oldest alpaca that we have, and seems to be leader of the pack (though sometimes shares that job with Victoria). We are very excited that she's been bred to Avatar and will be delivering our first cria in mid-April. Since both dam and sire are white we are expecting a white cria, but you never know. I think she looks pregnant but some say you can't tell until about a month before they are due. I'm predicting a girl, she seems to be carrying high in her ribs (just a wild guess).


I love this picture of Snowstorm, it really shows off his "smile". Funny thing about him is that he's been the easiest for me to manage. When he first came here he was so big, and with only 3 alpacas, he often gave me trouble (stealing food from the others ect). But now that we added in most alpacas, Snowstorm is the best behaved. He herds where I want him to go. He waits his turn. He's awesome.


Our farm kitties, Fluffy and Thunder, hanging out in the hay.

Farm Visit - Pictures!

I finally got the pictures that we took from a farm visit we had in December. My neice had a birthday party and all the kids came over to see the alpacas. They fed them carrots. Most of the girls wanted to feed the alpacas, some were hesitant at first, but then when they saw the others doing it, they wanted to too.

Sommerfield

We got a hold of Sommerfield last night to check her fiber. I was happy to feel that she is not overweight, she just has a lot of fiber on her. Her fiber was thick and had crimp. It will be interesting to see how to does in shows this spring.

Very cold weekend

The temps this weekend are in the single digits with wind chills below 0*F. Very cold! We put out some more straw for the alpacas. Fed them a little bit extra grain, and made sure they have plenty of hay to eat. When we went to check on them this morning they seemed to be doing fine. Suposedly alpacas are supose to do fine in the cold, their fiber keeping them warm. It's heat that is rough on them. But the cold is miserable to me and I can't help but worry how they are doing.

pronking

I had read about pronking but I must not have really understood what it was. I was picturing young alpaca dancing in the pasture as "pronking". This morning it turns out I saw pronking. I fed the alpacas and when I got back I mentioned to J that while the pregnant alpacas were eating, Sommerfield started bucking. I thought she was really mad that they were eating and she wasn't (Maddie was humming very sadly and Snowstorm was giving me a look). J said "that's pronking." Oh! Now I get it.

Maddie

Turns out Maddie is older than we thought. Somehow J and I thought she was born in October. We were puzzled that she was old and big enough to wean given an October birthdate. Well she was born September 2nd, so definately old enough to wean. Now it makes sense why she is almost the same size as Sommerfield. They are about 5 months apart in age.

Maddie has become rather friendly. She is a curious alpaca. Well, all apacas are curious and given the chance they want to watch what you are doing. But I've found some are the first to come check out what you are doing, and some are the ones who stand in the back of the group to watch. Victoria has always been the first one, we often call her "nosey". Kateri is one that is more likely to stand in the back. Now it seems Maddie is even faster than Victoria in coming to see what I'm doing. Maddie has also let Emma pet her. She seems to be ok with people coming near her. However, I have a lot of difficulty herding Maddie, she doesn't seem to see the need to move.

Sancha, on the other hand, is very quick to move, but jumps and moves so fast she never goes where I was directing her. She loves food, at lot like Victoria who will eat as much as they can get, even spitting at other alpacas to get more food.

Adjusting

Everyone on our farm is adjusting since the addition of Sancha, Sommerfield and Maddie. Feeding time has been pretty much chaos. I think we make it more difficult in that we measure out the grain specifically for each animal. Some of the farms we have visited do it this way. But others just set out grain and let them eat, no set measuring for each animal. When we did a "free for all" type arrangement, Victoria ate more than her share and Kateri got less. That is what lead to the weight issues here. I do remember it taking a few days for us to get into a good routine with Victoria, Kateri and Snowstorm. It's expected there will be an adjustment now too. Especially since these 3 came from a bigger farm where there was a free for all type arrangement.

I was happy to see that no one pooped in the barn. I was worried someone might decide there needed to be a poop pile inside. They did start a new one in the pasture (up to this point there was only 1 pile, right outside the door of the barn in the pen area). That's fine with me that they started another pile (as long as it wasn't in the barn ;) ).

Sommerfield and Maddie seem to be confused by the cats. They watch the cats, and sniff the cats and seem to be puzzled by what the cats are and what they are doing. The cats have become good buddies and love to wrestle so that adds entertainment for the alpacas. Sommerfield seems very dependent on her mom, Sancha. Sommerfield is 9 months old and is weaned but follows her mom everywhere and has tried to nurse (though Sancha fights her off and won't let her). We are concerned this could be more of a problem when Sancha's new baby is born (due in mid-April). We don't want conflict between Sommerfield and the new cria. It would be ideal to separate Sommerfield and Sancha but we do not have enough pastures to do that. Maddie is almost as big as Sommerfield, though she is younger. We are not sure on her exact age because we haven't gotten all her records yet. We believe she was born in October, so still really young, around 3 months old. She is doing great considering she was taken from her mom and weaned cold turkey when we picked her up. I feel bad for her. I know it's nature, but still sad to think about. She is doing great, holding her own with the other alpacas (I've seen her spit the big ones off when they push her too much). She seems to follow Sommerfield around (who is following Sancha).

J said he got Sommerfield and Maddie into the holding pen this morning to get a good look at their fiber. He said based on their behavior it does appears that they have had hardly any human contact. It is going to take some training to get Sommerfield halter trained for shows by this spring. It's never too late to train them, but we need to start working hard on it. He did the morning feeding today and said it was chaos again. I haven't come up with a good idea of how to handle it. It's my turn to do the feeding tonight, so I need to come up with a game plan.

I am mad at Kodak

Back on October 12th my camera broke (I remember vividly because it was in the middle of my daughter's birthday party). I looked into getting it fixed. I came across the Kodak "upgrade program". This is where you send in your old camera that needs a repair, they keep it, but send you a coupon for 25% off a new camera. My camera is at least 5 years old, an upgrade would be awesome! So I jumped on that deal.

I filled out the form and sent in my camera as I was instructed to. The first glitch happened when the place I sent my camera to (a repair place) sent me an estimate for repair. I called them and explained I was not seeking repair, I was enrolled in the Kodak upgrade program. They told me that Kodak had not sent them the paperwork that showed I was enrolled and I needed to contact them.

I emailed Kodak about the problem and they emailed me back with the assumption my camera never got to the repair place. I emailed again explaining that my camera was there, waiting for them to give me my coupon. Another email back stated I needed to call the 800 number since we did not seem to be communicating well through email. So I called the 800 number, waited on hold, then waited for the guy to find my reference number. Then he had to talk to someone else. In the end he said I would get my coupon.

Three weeks later, no coupon.

I wanted to get my new camera before Christmas. Now it is mid-January and I still don't have it. My blog would be so much better with pictures.

They are here!

Today we drove to Autumn Alpacas to pick up Sancha, Sommerfield and Maddie. Originally we did not think we could pick up Maddie yet but Ed felt she was big enough to wean.

Our trailer and truck worked great, no problems. The alpacas seemed to travel well in there. J had put a sealer on the floor, then some mats and straw on top of that, along with vents to make sure there was air flow. We were happy to see that there is plenty of room in the trailer, much more than we realized. We had 3 in there (course 2 are little ones) but there was plenty of room. We shouldn't need anything bigger than this one.

Back at our farm there is some adjustment to be made adding in 3 girls. There was sniffing and some spitting but overall a friendly greeting. We will see how it all works out. It will be interesting to see if Victoria remains queen of the farm. Maddie and Sommerfield did not know what to do with the cats, they would go up and sniff them and watch them play.

Feeding time tonight will be interesting.

J is working on a shelter so that we can bring Remmington home soon. We will move Snowstorm in with Remmington. There is plenty of room in the barn as it is now, but given 3 of the girls are due to have babies and 2 are under a year old, we think it best to make it a mom/baby barn for now. Remmington and Snowstorm can be in a "boy" barn.

Dare I dream?

Tomorrow we are going to pick up Sancha and Sommerfield. We may be able to take Maddie too!!! Oh I hope so :)

Conditioned Behavior

The famous psychology experiment by Pavlof showed that you can incite a response to a stimulus even if the stimulus is not provided. His experiment was to ring a bell, then give dogs food. After this was repeated for multiple days the dogs started salivating at the sound of the bell, expecting food. In time he did not even have to provide the food, just the bell would make the dogs salivate even if they did not get food afterward.

At our house we have joked that seeing me makes the dog have to poop. It doesn't matter when I get home, it doesn't matter if they were just outside, when I come home the dogs have to go outside. I'm sure this goes back to when they were pups and I would come home from work to let them out. Though I can't say they poop everytime they go out.

Now it seems seeing me is making Kateri poop. It started because I usually clean up poop while the alpacas are eating. Kateri loves to be the first to poop after the pile is cleaned up, so she would poop right after she was done eating. Then there were some days I didn't clean the poop, but Kateri still would poop after eating. After a couple weeks I noticed when I walked up to the barn to feed them supper, Kateri would poop upon seeing me. She wasn't even waiting until after she ate, or for the cleaned up poop pile. Yesterday hit a new point, I was going for a walk and walked by the pasture, it was not meal time for them, but Kateri saw me and walked over to the pile to poop. Seems I make her poop. Not sure I want to be associated with poop!

Shows

This spring we want to participate in some alpaca shows. Maddie is really too young (she could make the cut off for some shows but we feel it would be better if she was a bit older so we will hold off on showing her until fall). Remington has only been shown once despite being 2 years old. And at that showing he was in the wrong color class. We really need some more shows under his belt. And there is Sommerfield who will be 1 in April, who has yet to be shown. We are curious how she will do in shows (given her white color and the fact white is such a difficutl category). Plus she is for sale and I'm sure buyers want to know how well she does too. But that leaves us with the problem of transporting and showing an almost 1 year old female and a 2.5 yeard old male. They cannot be kept together.

We have debated back and forth on what to do. We would like to show at the Indiana Invitational in March so we need to make a decision and sign up. J emailed the show organizer and they said they could give us an extra divider for our stall so we would only need 1 stall and could have both in there. J is going to work on making a divider for our trailer so that we can transport both of them. Looks like we are going to a show!