The modern holiday of Halloween has its origins in the ancient Gaelic festival known as Samhain. The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture.Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would frequently involve bonfires, where the bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown. Costumes and masks were also worn at the festivals in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or placate them. When the Romans occupied Celtic territory, several Roman traditions were also incorporated into the festivals. Feralia, a day celebrated in late October by the Romans for the passing of the dead as well as a festival which celebrated the Roman Goddess Pomona, the goddess of fruit were incorporated into the celebrations. The symbol of Pomona was an apple, which is a proposed origin for the tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween. American style trick or treating is a new development.

Everything is quiet on the alpaca farm today. We have been busy this morning emptying the hanging baskets and planters and turning off the irrigation that feeds the planters on the deck.

This is one of the big helicopters that have been fighting fires down in California heading home.
Tomorrow is Halloween and the weather forecast is very good it should be great fun watching the parade in the afternoon.

Had an interesting call from one of my friends and customers to say that her alpacas had won yet another blue ribbon and that one of her females was showing no interest in feeding a newly born cria. Not really sure what to recommend as they are very competent breeders so just have to hope its a short term behaviour that will sort itself out very soon.

Meanwhile the alpaca virus is rolling along and getting many breeders into a real spin... the veterinary commmunity are in no hurry to get excited. So there is a certain amount of tension in the air....

The trees are now changing color and autumn is very much in the air.



The local pear orchards look beautiful in the autumn sun as the leaves turn to gold.

We have finally given up on a third cutting of hay.... well actually I gave up on third cutting some while ago we can say now with 100% confidence that it isn't going to happen.
Macario has rearranged the fencing so that the male alpacas can get into the hay field and have a good romp around. Tomorrow morning providing the weather is okay I will move them over.

Everything else is now very quiet on the farm and even the weeds look like they are lacking in vigor. Even the dogs have decided that lounging by the fire is way better than jumping into the pond.

If you are wondering what is happening with the so called snots in alpaca then the recent posting by Chris Cebra is worth reading.

Today we had a farm visit from Rebeccca and Bob who live in Klamath Falls and have a growing herd of fiber boys. They were here for two hours and the time simply flew by as we talked about everything from shearing alpacas to retailing alpaca products.

It wasn't till I thought about our fiber boys that I realised just how few we have left at the moment not counting the two new arrivals that haven't been weaned, we are down to four castrated male alpacas and of course our two intact boys Santo and Conman who haven't really had any chance to prove themselves in quantity and quality...

This is the dilemma of keeping boys back as potential junior herd sires and then not having sufficient females around to put them to the real test and see what sort of progeny they produce over a wide range of female types and colors.

Alpaca breeding its all making decisions with scant information.

No not the animals the owners of course.

Right now you would think we were in the grip of the bubonic plague rather than a virus which appears to be serious/fatal for a very small number of affected animals and then almost certainly those who are in some compromised in terms of their immune system.

The follow map is the latest example where some well intentioned soul has plotted cases of infection onto a map of the USA.

What does this map show? well in my opinion it shows nothing at all.

You can't see the detail at this scale but essentially the map tries to show that all infections have originated from AOBA shows taking place all over the country.

So why do I think it is grossly misleading?

Firstly, I have no idea what the source of the information on here is but I guarantee it is not comprehensive and we have no idea what proportion of infected animals it may represent or even what the degree of error maybe.

Second, for each case of the infection the county is then colored in, so where a county is colored there could be one alpaca infected on one farm or 1,000 alpacas affected on 50 farms.

Thirdly, each reported case of the infection is linked to a show...so what does that mean that the infection springs to life spontaneously at the show? No of course not to come away infected someone else must take the infection to the show. And how can we even be certain that the show was the source?

Fourthly, this denies all other sources of infection such as breeding's, farm visits, auctions and the to and fro of your local veterinarian.

Fifthly, as these reportings are anecdotal there is no guarantee they are all from the same virus or related in anyway whatsoever.

Finally, so what? Assuming it is accuracte (which it isn't) what exactly are we meant to do now we have this chart?

I can't honestly think of one thing I can do differently as a result of seeing this information.

Frankly I am happier being un-informed than ill-informed as the latter can lead me into drawing false conclusions. A well intentioned initiative no doubt , but seriously misguided....

Look out STAMPEDE !!!!!!!!!

well not really.
Just trying to get a decent mock up of an alpaca being bottle fed for a magazine article. Not as easy as it sounds. But after much fun and games we did get some decent shots.



Well i know it looks posed i mean who kneels down in the middle of a field to feed an alpaca cria. But as i say it wasn't as easy as you imagine and to make the rubber Pritchard nipple attractive I put some light corn syrup on the end.... now that stuff can be very sticky and before long Camilla had it on her chin and then he was much more interested in her chin than the feeding bottle.



Oh well we have sent off the best pictures and we will see what happens.

This afternoon Larry Vellozzi came buy and collected Babbo the alpaca who we have sold and is off to live elsewhere. The farm he is going to only have one alpaca left after their second alpaca died and as you may well know alpacas cannot live alone. They are first and foremost a herd animal.

Work on forecasting the growth of the national alpaca herd is coming along as I build the mathematical model and the data coming out of ARI is quite amazing to my mind but we will see what happens once we build the model and run some simulations.

Before the light totally faded I started to take some of the shots that I was commissioned to take of alpaca cria feeding bits and pieces.



This picture shows a traditional feeding bottle with a teat designed for lambs and with which most people are familiar. Also in the picture is an alpaca cria feeding bottle with Pritchard nipple. On the right is a jar of frozen colostrum.

The weather has turned colder today and we will be putting the water trough heaters in tomorrow just to be on the safe side.

Today has been a day of many tasks..... we have had a few sales enquiries arrive and one was even from the Faeroe Islands which are between Denmark and Norway... looking for pet quality males to join a herd of 8 alpacas he already owns....

Then I entered into an e-mail storm with a group of people I am working with to try and sort out a structure for the affiliate congress.... not easy but important to get it right.

This was followed by a blast up the road to collect the animal feed that will take us through winter not a great big load by any means but essential that we collect it today. At the grain mill I met Correy Bol who organises the grain collection for alpaca breeders in this part of the world.

Then when I got home I had a call from an animal magazine looking for images of alpaca cria for an article they are running about colostrum and the passive transfer of immunity to cria from their mothers.

All of which ended with a call from one of our clients who needs me to sign off on an Alpaca Registry application...which is a very straight forward task you can do online in a couple of minutes. Providing your partner wasn't the last person to use the ARI system and changed the log in password !

Maybe tomorrow will be more relaxed....... somehow I doubt it.

Chris Cebra has asked me to share this with anyone who may be interested.



Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents about the recent outbreaks of respiratory disease in alpacas, so scientifically referred to as “snots”. The course and contagiousness of this certainly sounds viral, and the association of adenovirus with this is interesting, but I believe we must interpret that finding with caution. Don Mattson first isolated camelid adenovirus here in Oregon about 15 years ago, and the folks at Michigan State found it there about the same time. That virus quickly became the whipping boy for all sorts of diseases, from diarrhea, to respiratory disease, to hepatopathy, to ill thrift. It was convenient, because most ill camelids had a positive titer. So did most healthy camelids. Not as convenient. Though we have seen adenovirus as a cause of respiratory disease in clinics, the ubiquitous nature of adenoviral infection means we have to be cautious of overinterpreting single titers. Rising titers, virus isolation, or identification of characteristic inclusion bodies in lesions would be more supportive. I would be interested to know if anyone has identified any of those in any of their clinical cases.

Herpesviruses are another possibility, but have really not been described as causing this sort of issue in camelids. The show-related, rapid-spread of this infection does remind me of the enteric coronavirus outbreak we identified in camelids about nine years ago, and quickly became a nationwide problem. Interestingly, that coronavirus we sequenced was related to a form of bovine coronavirus associated with both enteric and respiratory disease. I wonder if we are seeing another jump from cattle or separate mutation that has potentiated the respiratory aspect of the infection…… If anyone is interested in pursuing that angle, Ling Jin, my virologist collaborator with expertise in camelid coronavirus has agreed to start looking at samples, virus isolation on nasal swabs of acutely infected animals and serum neutralization titers. I just thought I’d throw this into the discussion, since coronavirus had been heretofore ignored.


Chris Cebra, VMD, MS, Diplomate ACVIM
Associate Professor OSU Oregon

One of the many activities that SOJAA (State of Jefferson Alpaca Association) are involved with is the encouragement of local veterinary practices to become involved with the care and treatment of camelids and alpacas in particular.

As part of this we provide books, scholarships for veterinary staff to attend alpaca courses at leading universities and specialist equipment.

This weekend we delivered an alpaca chute to Crater Animal Clinic who provide care to a number of SOJAA members in the Rogue Valley.



Here you can see Dr Kaiser on the left and Dr Richardson on the right checking out the new alpaca chute made in the USA by Shaul Manufacturing

The gentleman in the hat is Richard Gyuro the vice president of SOJAA.

A quick search on Google shows that Mulberry Alpacas have just made it onto the first page for the search term alpacas....

An alpaca on Fulsom Farm was confirmed to have had Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) by the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services last week.
Peter Buckingham, who owns the alpaca, said the four-month-old alpaca cria began having seizures last Sunday. That's when Peter brought him to Tim Fallon DVM of Cornerstone Veterinary Hospital in Epping.
Dr. Fallon was able to stabilize the seizures for a brief time, but Peter said they continued on Monday and so he reluctantly decided to have the animal put down.
EEE is a virus that, if diagnosed in humans, is fatal 32 percent of the time and, if not fatal, half of the surviving cases result in long-term neurological damage with the possibility of seizures and a decrease in day-to-day functioning like walking, talking, and speaking, according to New Hampshire State Public Health Veterinarian Jason Stull.
Animals should be vaccinated where appropriate and veterinary approved repellents should be used to prevent mosquito bites, says Nicholas Toumpas, the acting commissioner of the state Department of Health and Human Services. Humans should also use insect repellent, he says.

There has been some work done on an EEE vaccine in alpacas and the results of using the vaccine can be found at the North East Alpaca Owners Association and the vaccine itself can be purchased from American Livestock as with alll alpaca medications this is off label and should only be used after consultation with your veterinarian.

Managing vet check for our annual alpaca show AlpacaMania is nothing if not interesting.. most alpacas arrive at the show in trailers of all different shapes and sizes but a handful arrive in minivans.



English Collie dogs up front riding shotgun and Suri alpacas down the back. I imagine it gets a bit smelly in there during the hot weather but you certainly don't have to slow down when there are trailer speed restrictions...

For anyone interested in buying alpacas for the first time or even for those who want a refresher there is good article in the Mulberry Alpacas library on purchasing alpacas.
If you are interested in finance we even offer finance options on our production females who are all pregnant to Studmaster males.

Once again the mighty show is upon us.

Last week we had a staggering 425 entries which was causing us something of a problem...as that number means we need two show rings and two judges..... fate helped out and the recent outbreak of a virus which is sometimes reffered to as The SNOTS is among our animals. Some of us believe it to be Adenovirus but we are not certain at this time.
See my previous entry on Adenovirus yesterday and the day before.

All of which has reduced our number of entries to the 385 level or there abouts...never underestimate the power of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Or FUD for short.





You can see in this picture that there are two types of micro chipp system which are sunstantially incompatible...the latest universal readers are now available but sell for about $400.

There appears to be something going around which has been endearingly called the snots or alpaca snots. If that is what you were searching for then read on.

Well here is what I have discovered about Adenovirus;



In Humans:

Adenoviruses, of which there are over 40 different serotypes in humans, are responsible for 5–10% of upper respiratory infections in children, and many infections in adults as well.
Most people recover from adenovirus infections by themselves, but people with immune-system problems sometimes die of adenovirus infections, and—very rarely—even previously healthy people can die of these infections.

In animals:

Two types of canine adenoviruses are well known, type 1 and 2.

Type 1 causes infectious canine hepatitis, a potentially fatal disease involving vasculitis and hepatitis. Type 1 infection also can cause respiratory and eye infections. Canine adenovirus 2 (CAdV-2) is one of the potential causes of kennel cough. Core vaccines for dogs include attenuated live CAdV-2, which produces immunity to CAdV-1 and CAdV-2. CAdV-1 was initially used in a vaccine for dogs, but corneal edema was a common complication.[3]

Adenoviruses are also known to cause respiratory infections in horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats. Equine adenovirus 1 can also cause fatal disease in immunocompromised Arabian foals, involving pneumonia and destruction of pancreatic and salivary gland tissue.

In Camelids:

All of the following comes from an Australian Government report.

Adenovirus infection has been reported as common in llamas in North America (Post Graduate Foundation in Veterinary Science University of Sydney (1996) Proceedings 278, Camelid Medicine and Surgery 3). The most commonly isolated antibodies are to llama adenovirus which has been associated with disease in llamas.
Two species of adenovirus have been isolated from llamas neither of which are antigenically related to the adenoviruses of other domestic animals. Llama adenoviruses, as with other adenoviruses, typically infect a large percentage of a population with very few animals showing clinical disease. Camelids previously imported into Australia have not been tested for adenovirus and it is most likely that the adenoviruses affecting South American camelids are already established in Australia. For these reasons adenoviruses are not considered to have quarantine significance.

Bottom line Adenovirus appears to be present in all llamas and to such a wide extent that it isn't even looked for when camelids are imported into Australia from South America.

Adenovirus can be linked to liver problemes in camelids but as David E Anderson who used to be at Ohio State says: "Diagnosis of the cause of liver disease in camelids can be an exercise in frustration.

Histopathology (microscopic examination of liver tissue by means of liver biopsy) usually is not specific: hepatic lipidosis, biliary hyperplasia, lymphocytic plasmacytic hepatitis are common findings.

Occasionally cholangiohepatitis (infection of the bile ducts) or cholestasis (obstruction to bile flow) are diagnosed from biopsy.

Although histopathology often does not provide a definitive diagnosis, the information gained is well worth the effort. Because few specific liver diseases have been described for camelids, differential diagnoses should be broad in range: metabolic (e.g., fatty liver, cirrhosis), parasitic (e.g., liver flukes), toxic (e.g., mycotoxin, endotoxin, clostridium spp), bacterial (e.g., Salmonella spp, Clostridial spp, E coli), viral (e.g., adenovirus), fungal (e.g., Coccidioides imitis), and tumors or cancer (e.g., adenocarcinoma). I routinely perform ultrasound guided percutaneous liver biopsy and obtain samples for histopathology, virology, and bacteriology.

Oh well you know what they say..... a little knowledge can be dangerous....so always talk through your thoughts and concerns with your veterinary.

Increasingly the evidence from the recent infections we have seen is pointing to Adenovirus as the main culprit.

Adenovirus has been around for a while, and often comes up as the catch all virus, and it was originally blamed for fatty liver and various other ailments. Further investigation revealed most camelids had been exposed (as demonstrated by antibody titers), so it obviously wasn’t as heinous as first suspected. It then lapsed into obscurity around here in the Pacific North West.

Where does that leave us? Well I have spoken with many affected farmers and several vets here are my thoughts.

1) adenovirus can be quite nasty at times (crias, immunodeficient animals).

2) that it is generally mild.

3) that it conceivably could lead to both mild outbreaks and more severe disease under the right conditions.

4) that isolating from a camelid doesn’t mean it’s the cause of the disease.

5) that demonstrating something like a rising antibody titer or virus within lesions would be most convincing.

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