You just never know what the day has is store ......do you?
This morning we took in the three alpaca cria that were born in the autumn to give them their booster shots for the 8 way vaccine. All three are really looking good and healthy. Although I didn't know it at the time I was going to be helping with a more natural injection later in the day.

Sergeant Pepper a handsome white male alpaca was born on Oct 24th and is now 78 lbs.

Bandelier a gorgeous light fawn female alpaca was born on Sept 30th and is now
102 lbs.

Evita a beautiful brown female alpaca was born on Oct 20th and is now 82 lbs. A gain of 22 lbs in the last 47 days. So almost 1/2 lb a day.



We were going to cut some toenails but the weather was looking threatening so Macario continued with his wall building project while it was still dry.



The wall extension is so that we can extend the vegetable garden.

Then the strangest thing happened. A young Mexican guy who uses my unwanted rocks to build walls for other clients showed up with his friend. It turns out his friend has a very painful wrist and he would like me to get my bees to sting him on the wrist!!

I am not quite sure what my insurance company would make of this but I certainly wasn't going to charge anyone for the service.

So to cut a long story short we encouraged some of the bees to wake up and share their venom...... I have to say he took it very well as they injected him and hardly flinched at all. I do hope it works, he was convinced it would work and said that he had been looking for bees for some time in order to get the cure.

Meanwhile the rain has arrived so I shall be staying in the warm and dry for the rest of the day and catching up on some paperwork.

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

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In South America, up to half of the newborn alpacas die before they reach
weaning age.
To prevent that from happening in this area, the Oregon State
University College of Veterinary Medicine run a series of neonatal clinics for alpaca owners.

The next course is on Saturday, March 17 and Sunday, 18th, 2007, 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Magruder Hall, College of Veterinary Medicine, Oregon State University.

I have been on the alpaca neonatal course and it was really excellent with lectures, discussions, and practical exercises (including pulling crias from the artificial uteri) which is very useful practice for those awkward births. Although pulling cold, wet, slightly smelly alpaca cria from plastic uteri doesn't completely relate to putting your hand into the very hot and tight uteri of a living alpaca.

On the second day the herd health topics will include nutrition, parasite control, vaccinations, herd monitoring, “red flags” signs of disease.

The two days are an excellent investment of time especially for those new to the industry. To book a place please contact:


Email = pat.hutson@oregonstate.edu

Pat Hutson
Camelid Neonatology Workshop Office of the Dean
Oregon State University College of Veterinary Medicine
200 Magruder Hall
Corvallis, OR 97331


Adrian Stewart

A freezing temperature overnight meant that the schools all started two hours later this morning.

Mac brought up the male alpacas and we did the usual toenails weighing and health check.

Most of the boys were overweight even though there is virtually no goodness in the grass at the moment and they are hardly eating any hay. Alpacas can survive on thin air they really can. Dr Chris Cebra from OSU said that they took a group of geldings and put them onto 25% of their normal nutritional requirements and after 28 days they had only lost 3% of their body weight....



The boys toenails were much longer than the girls toe nails and the only ifference is that the girls use a barn that has a concrete floo. Another great benefit of having a concrete floor in your barn....for alpacas its like walking on a giant emery board.

Adrian Stewart

While looking round at NWA I discovered this very relaxed and contented alpaca that is unfortuantely blind. She has lived in the same pasture for 10 years now and knows her way round every square inch so she can find water and hay as quickly and easily as the rest of the herd.



This year she has given birth to a gorgeous cria.






Adrian Stewart

As I arrived at NWA on Friday morning one of their maiden female alpacas, called Bailey, was in labour and the head of the cria was already out. Never having my camera far away proved to be a good idea and the following series of 11 photographs says it all.

The following sequence took ten minutes to film, its that fast once the head and front feet are out.
























Adrian Stewart

Today I delivered a very attractive dark brown female alpaca of ours called Mia Sorella to Happy Valley the home of Al, Jan & Aaron, Julie Vizina. Here she will be bred to SRR Kashino a very handsome male who's offspring are winning blue ribbons on a regular basis.







Adrian Stewart

Well not exactly a whole vet day but almost!
I had quite a list of tasks for our vet Dr Tara Timpson to work on with her assistant Anita.
We had medicals for girls going away to be bred, fighting teeth to be checked on the boys and a couple of microchips to insert. Along the way I wanted to look at a couple of skin blemishes and two animals recovering from mite infestations.

Everything was pretty much routine apart from a dreaded microchip issue where we could not find a chip we had implanted earlier but did find one that we didn't even know was there.....all of which consumed a good deal of valuable time and effort.

One of the females I was planning to take to Portland tomorrow will not be going after all. We noticed during shearing that she had a couple of small lumps on her side. Dr Timpson decided it would be best to remove the smaller lump and send it to the lab to determine what it was.




The female is given a sedative and a couple of shots of local anesthetic on either side of the lump.











The small growth turns out to be nothing more than a pustule which could be caused by something as simple as a ingrowing hair.

Dr Timpson stitches up the wound ,disinfects the site and apples fly repellent. The stitches can come out after 10 days.

I obviously haven't checked the fighting teeth soon enough as one boy is the victin af a nasty neck bite and it will need dressing with Nolvasan each day until it heals

Off to Portland tomorow. So the Blog may get behind slightly while I am away.

Adrian Stewart

Today we took Santo back to the vet to check his feet which are recovering but only slowly. And we took our female who's cria died to check her out.

Dr Timpson scraped Santos feet and checked for mites but couldn't find any so assume that they are healing. However we will continue with the local application of Atroban on all four legs and his centre line. Plus we gave him a shot of Ivomectin. The Atroban we will do after he has been shorn next weekend.

Our female alpaca checked out normally and an inspection of the cervix by Dr Timpson looked fine but we took a swab to be safe and a blood sample just to check everything is as it should be. While we were there we did an ultrasound just to make sure she was?empty" and that everything else looked normal.

So the good news is that she is fine and we are just waiting for the swab and blood panel results to confirm what we saw in the examination.





Adrian Stewart

The Atroban treatment on Santos feet doesn't appear to be tackling the mite problem. So I have arranged to take him to the vet clinic on Thursday next week and have a more thorough examination.



Adrian Stewart

The sun is shining but its been a dark day. This morning I found the lifeless body of a newborn cria in the grass. The birth was due any day but somehow we missed it and failed to spot the mother had given birth last night.

Why he was still born is a mystery and now we will never know.

Our focus is on checking the dam and making sure she is okay and then getting ready to rebreed her.

All part of being involved with livestock and breeding living animals.

Adrian Stewart

I recently asked my local group of alpaca breeders what were the most effective hay feeders.
John Merrell suggested using small carts that can be purchased from stores such as Home Depot.

A bale of hay fits in nicely. But what really impresses me is that the alpacas just love them as hay feeders at at about $90 each they aren't expensive compared to many "agricultural products".

The hay feeders can be pulled by hand or attach easily to the Gator so we can tow them from field to field.




Adrian Stewart

When you are new to the business of alpaca husbandry there is plenty to learn. Here are just two things I noticed today while walking with my boys in the late afternoon. Its nothing complicated in fact its obvious but you won't notice unless you look.





This last picture shows a white animal with bright green stains on his back. These grass stains are fresh bite marks and indicate this animal is being dominated by another animal. It may be a one off event but needs watching. Tomorrow the stains will be a darker green so any new bites will show up as a brighter green.

It was our youngest sons birthday today and he turned 13.



Adrian Stewart

Before you can even buy fertilizer you need to do a soil analysis. Once you have had the soil analysed by a reliable lab you can then formulate a fertilizer mix.
Today we applied an OMRI approved 9-3-7 mix each number on a fertilizer refers to a specific compound
The first is Nitrogen (N), the second is Phosphate (P2O5) and the third is Potash (K20).

Our land is very low in nitrogen and so we applied the fertilizer at a rate of 250lbs per acre.

After the fertilizer is spread we use a chain harrow to get it down onto the soil and then hope for rain to wash it in.

Today I spread 6,000 lbs in 10 hours.

The Grange Co-op supply the fertilizer in 2,000 lb Totes and the cost is $700 per ton.



Then you hitch up the tractor, start the engine on the spreader and get spreading!



We also heard from Gaia our wonderful Italian friend and alpaca breeder to say she will be here at the end of July...so we are all very excited. If you read this Gaia your boots are ready and waiting...



Adrian Stewart

A recent fecal test revealed we have a few alpacas with worms so that triggers a worming session. We prefer this route rather than the worm every month no matter what approach.

We used the new worming syringe and it worked a treat much better than the old syringe we had.



As a wormer we are using liquid Panacur which appears to be fairly effective.



Adrian Stewart

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