Once Jamie had put all the alpacas out in their respective pastures and cleaned out the barn.
We loaded Santo into the trailer and I head off to Crater Animal Clinic to meet Dr Timpson for the skin scraping.



Santo does not like having his legs touched and as expected cushed almost straight away.

Dr Timpson scraped from off a hind leg into a few drops of mineral oil. Then went off to put her sample onto a slide for microscopic analysis.



It doesn't take long before she has several of the little horrors in focus and at x90 magnification they are truly revolting.




Dr. Timpsons education and experience beat my home grown talents and I conceded defeat...it does look like its mites after all and not fungus as I had previously thought. Well you live and learn.

Well at least this will give me a chance to try the Atroban rather than the "witches brew" I used last time an alpaca had mites.

Once safely home I mix up some of the Atroban at the dosage of 1:200 then using latex gloves and face mask give Santo's legs a good soaking using a hand held 2 pint sprayer. That's it now for two weeks. I will keep you posted on developments.

Thanks to Dr Timpson and the staff at Crater Animal Clinic....why they even gave me a short video on disc of a mite tumbling about in the mineral oil....its about 4MB so if you want to see it just ask....


Adrian Stewart