The last time Dr Timpson was here she removed some fighting teeth from a couple of male alpacas.



Fighting teeth must be dealt with if your alpaca male is going to live with other alpacas and since many intact males do some ear biting as they breed it is really the prudent approach even for breeding males that live alone. There are a few different approaches to fighting teeth. They can be removed totally including the root which involves major surgery and is more risk, effort and expense than most people are willing to deal with. Cutting the tips off of the teeth is by far the easier and safer route and offers most of the same benefits. There are a couple of different approaches to removing the tips of the teeth:

Trim the tips of the teeth as they first erupt when the males are between a year and a half and two and a half years old. At this point, the very pointed tiny tips are removed ideally when the male is being shorn without sedation. These tiny tips can be nipped off with a variety of tools most commonly the same nippers one uses for trimming nails.

Larger and longer teeth in older males can be removed with OB wire ideally when the male is restrained or sedated. Longer teeth require more time and care to remove and sedation makes the job easier for the handler as well as the alpaca. With the alpaca sedated, the job can be done carefully and the tips of the teeth can be filed off and made smooth.

Adrian Stewart