Recently I was asked the Question: Have I ever had to milk a female alpaca? And did I have some tips…

Yes, I’ve had to milk an alpaca. Too many times, actually. And it’s difficult. You need 2 people or a chute usually to hold the dam still. I find most alpaca dams don’t have enough milk that you can milk out by hand to sustain a weak cria.

Some alpaca breeders tell of being able to milk alpacas with syringe tips and other rigged things. I am in awe of their patience and their alpacas. I have only had two alpacas over the years who had enough milk that I could do that and get enough milk to sustain the cria. Remember – I also have 4 children, and am currently flying solo with 50 other alpacas. Most of the time I have 10 loads of laundry, a basketball tournament, and a piano recital calling for me, not to mention several little voices calling “Mommy”, and that creepy cat that thinks he’s my boyfriend. So I have to be practical, and I do it a little bit differently.

Back to milking. I always milk out the dam enough to keep her milk flowing, but not enough to make her sore. Christine Navarre, DVM advises that too much milking by human hands can cause the alpacas’ teats to become too sore and may cause her to shy away when cria goes to nurse. (We do NOT want that!) So I milk no more than 2-3x a day.

Because that is usually not going to get me enough milk to sustain the cria, I supplement with local frozen goat colostrum that I keep on hand for the 1st 24 hours, then regular A & D cow’s milk after that (with a bit of  liquid yogurt, Activia or Kefir too for the gut) until mom and cria get connected – hopefully REAL SOON!

I always put mom and cria together around feeding time and try to get cria to nurse after each bottle feeding. NEVER giving that up. I keep mom and cria together as a twosome until the bonding/nursing thing is figured out.

My Stash of Frozen Goat Colostrum

Having frozen colostrum around when a new cria is born is critical. Just as important as it is to have plasma (for low IGG or failure of passive transfer).

Ideally we would all have frozen alpaca colostrum, but alpacas are not prolific milkers. When I was new to alpacas and trying to figure out how to find a vet that would work on them the famous vet, Dr. David Pugh told me, “Just tell them they’re just glorified goats. That’s what they are.”

So the next best colostrum is goat colostrum. I buy frozen from a goat farm in my area. I consider them “My Dealer”. I protect that stuff like it’s liquid gold. Because it is. It has life saving properties like nothing else! And I’m so lucky to have it. The fact that they are local means that those goats have built up an immunity to diseases and things in our area. That is priceless. It is infinitely better than buying it from some goats 6 states away. Or giving them powdered colostrum from a cow. (I’m not going to go into why, just trust me. or ask your vet. Either one.)

So, my opinion on the milking is – do a little milking, you will do a lot more bottle feeding. And try HARD, HARD, HARD to connect that dam and cria. Never give up on that. Don’t let them off the hook on that one. Or you will be bottle feeding for 6 months. And nobody wants that. (at least here they don’t!)

And most important of all - GET A DEALER~!

Ask around at the feed store or at your vet’s office – who raises goats? They can often tell you. Goat keepers will often sell you their frozen colostrum. You will feel SO good to know that it is in your freezer. OMG it is such a good feeling to know that it is there!

Do you see this alpaca above? His name is Colt McCoy (named for the wonderful Texas Longhorns quarterback). He is one of the finest alpacas I’ve ever bred. I bragged on him.

Alot.

If you have ever read my blog or met me, you’ve probably heard me going on and on…and on about my darling little Colt McCoy alpaca. He was born in October 2008 and I’ve blogged about him many times. (Here, here, here, and here, to name a few.) In my defense – I mean, look at him. I may have barn blinders on, but in the alpaca world – this “look” sells. Who doesn’t love the fuzzy teddy bear/Ewok  running around in the fields?

Even after shearing last Spring, he looked great. I’m completely infatuated with Colt. The camera loves him as much as I do. And his genetics rock.

Just look at his head. If my whole herd looked like this…*sighs dreamily*…

And then….the unthinkable happened.

It has taken me months to write about this occurrence. It was so heinous, so depressing that I could barely speak of it, much less write about it. Guess I’ll just blurt it out -

Colt lost all his hair!

And when I say “all his hair”….I mean, literally, “ALL THE HAIR on the top of his head!!!!!” All the poor guy had left were some eyelashes. Long, gorgeous, eyelashes that Brooke Shields would envy…but I digress. He also lost most of it on his body.

Here’s what happened:

One evening I glanced at Colt as he scooted past me. “Hmm,” I thought. “Colt’s face looks different. Less Fiber.” I made a mental note to check on him the next day because he had already run past me out into the field. Though I knew from my quick glimpse that something was “off” I couldn’t put my finger on it. In the back of my mind I figured that another alpaca had gotten nutty and plucked a small tuft of his fiber off his neck or something. I dared not think it was off his face.

The next day I got a gut-wrenching text from our farm manager: “Colt’s hair is falling out. He has no topknot.” My stomach dropped to the ground. My rare and much anticipated shopping trip at Target lost it’s shine. I headed for the checkout in a daze. My appetite took a vacation – unheard of. (I never miss a meal.) There was no joy in Mudville…

How could this happen? To my superstar boy? (Hush it, Murphy! Enough outta you & your fancy laws.)

Colt has had it all. Exceptional conformation, super fine, dense, crimpy fleece, tremendous bloodlines, star presence, and (*wipes a tear*) the best fiber coverage on the farm. I was ready to prance him into the show ring within a matter of months. So when I got that text, the only thing I could think, or say for that matter, for the next few hours was, “DAMN!” Seriously?

I rushed home, and we jumped into action. We took his temperature, checked his poop for parasites, gave him a good once over, and called the vet. The resulting diagnosis was a stress-break to the fiber due to heat stress and/or a high temperature which would have occurred previously. Interestingly it wasn’t that hot when this happened (compared to what is usual for us here in Alabama). Colt does grow a lot of fiber, But he showed us no signs that he was having any sort of heat problem. In fact, he was still walking around like everything was fine. Fine – EXCEPT HE’S BALD as Uncle Fester!

Thanks to Cheryl and Andy Bowen of Humming Star Alpacas who helped me realize that the only choice I had was to laugh. They helped me find the funny side to all this with this sympathy card they sent to Colt:

Enclosed Card

Note: In an email to Cheryl, as Colt’s guardian, I thanked them for their support and acknowledged that Colt would need their friendship now more than ever.

Cheryl thought we could get him a little hat and tell the AOBA Show Judge, “The hat is NOT coming off!” But judges don’t really like to hear that – so he’s a “scratch” for Alpaca Shows in the near future.

By now you’re probably dying to see what he looks like. Here’s how it looked to us:

This is one of the first views we saw. You can tell that something is going on with his fleece, particularly on his back legs. There are tufts of fiber coming off.

Here Colt is striding by and you can definitely tell that he doesn’t look like the Colt we are used to seeing. Fiber missing and hanging off of him…

But nothing can prepare you for this:

Yeah. And no, he did not have a date with Hannibal Lector. Though that’s exactly what kept running through my mind. Over and over again I kept saying, “Colt, where is the top of your head?”

Colt always buddies up with Xman. Xman is Colt’s security blanket of sorts since he was weaned from his dam, Nevoso, in June. It looks like Colt might be feeling shy about his hair loss, but I think he was just trying to avoid his usual paparazzi (me).

How ’bout that topknot? Like a scary Halloween costume for alpacas.

In an attempt to salvage what self-esteem Colt has left, we have kept him away from full-length mirrors. He has not seen himself.

Notice above he is standing in the typical, “Look at me! I am Fabulous, no?” Colt McCoy stance? We don’t have the heart to tell him, and his four-legged mates are kind enough not to mention it to him.

We waited about two weeks to let any more weak fibers grow on out, and then we sheared Colt all the way down. (His temperature was normal once we found the fiber loss, and it continued to become cooler outside so there was no need to “emergency shear” him immediately.) My goal was to try to salvage a fleece harvest from Colt. It is possible since he has a super long staple length.

National Alpaca Farm Day was coming up, and I wondered how people would respond to seeing Colt, who looked more like a deer with very long ears, than an alpaca.

Which One Is Not Like The Others? Yep, that’s him on the right.

Yes, he’s really a huacaya alpaca. Just a bald one.

Now all I can do is laugh. The prognosis is good. The vets say his fiber will all grow back just fine and there is no reason to think he will have any further problems from this incident. But my show headliner is out for the season.  I will just look at it as a sign from the man upstairs that instead of going to alpaca shows this Fall, maybe I should go to a fiber show. So I went to SAFF (Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair).

***Note: We’ve had alpacas for 10 years, and this is the first time this has ever happened. The universe’s way of keeping me humble.

I should never have said that my Colt McCoy alpaca was cuter than that Tim Tebow alpaca.

1. If a cria is hypothermic (low temperature), her organs will not get the appropriate amount of blood flow and may become damaged. The longer the temp is down, the worse the damage can be.
2. Having oxygen on hand can save the cria’s life. Consider asking your vet to help get you a small oxygen tank for your farm to have in an emergency. I had to take her to the vet’s office for one.
3. If a cria pees and it is a HUGE pool of blood – this probably means the kidneys are failing.
4. Have lama plasma around no matter what. You cannot count on Triple J Farms to get it to you in time. Too many things can go wrong & they don’t ship it out every day.
5. If you can’t get a cria’s temperature up with a hair dryer and heating pads, try putting the cria in a garbage bag (or two) and immersing her in a bathtub full of very warm water. (Who knew I would need this in August?)
6. When a cria is born in the summer it can become hypothermic quickly if born in front of the fan. The dam has been sitting in front of the fan to stay cool. A wet cria and a fan is NOT a good combination.
7. If a dam has to fight heat stress (even sub-clinical) her body doesn’t give the proper blood flow to the uterus, and the mechanism that tells her when to go into labor goes haywire.
8. There is a lot of support out there. The alpaca community is a a very friendly and supportive one. Reach out and you will find that a lot of people care and are there for you. Twitter & Facebook friends offered me lots of love & comfort.
9. Losing a premature cria after working on her for days is painful. However the joy that goes into helping her and caring for her, and the special moments between the pair of you is worth it.

“Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

~Alfred Lord Tennyson

…her ears were a bit wonky. Inside out, if you will.

This is something that happens occasionally. It is not genetic and is no cause for alarm. Ears like this can occur from prematurity or just being positioned that way in utero. Several times a day we work with the ears and “fix them” the right way with our fingers. Often this will be enough and the cria’s ears will then remain in the correct position. In some cases, like this one, more intervention is required to correct the ears.

With little Mimosa here, we taped her ears. The ears were placed into the proper shape, next we used vet wrap (pink – she’s so girly) to secure the shape. The vet wrap was slippery and wanted to just slide right off so we added vet tape at the base of the ear to keep it in place. We were concerned that using the really sticky vet tape over the whole ear would take out lots of fiber with it when we pulled it off (OUCH!) so we only used the sticky tape at the base of the ear.

I wish Mimosa would have held her ears up for these pictures. She usually had them up and alert. She looked like she had pink horns. It was too cute. Once the camera came out, though, she wouldn’t do it. (kids…)

We left the ‘ear wrap’ on for a couple of days. You don’t want to leave it on too long and you may have to do this several times for the ears to get with the program. Mimosa’s ears were fine within a few days.

AFTER. Here’s Mimosa after her ears were taped for a few days. Pretty as a picture!

Now it’s not her ears that make Mimosa stand out. It’s her curious personality. She and Dexter have become best friends. They are always hanging around each other, playing. Thick as thieves. I’ll have to post some pictures of them playing soon.

Tre

No, I’m not breeding for blindness.  lol. However, I have three wonderful alpacas with eye problems. Read My Home for the Blind – Part I (SiSi)

Beloved

This story begins with a wonderful fawn herdsire named Tre. After we had been breeding alpacas for a few years, we realized that we needed to beef up the density of our herd. (this means we needed our alpacas to have more fiber) We searched for a male who could help us with this goal, and we found an incredible one named Tre.

Tre was gorgeous and very laid back. He went to lots of shows. He would lumber into the showring, half-asleep with an attitude reminiscent of Eeyore. “I’m here. Thanks for noticing.” Never the flashiest guy in his class, but judges usually remarked that Tre had the best fleece in the class.  He was often the bridesmaid with a multitude of 2nd place ribbons.

On the farm, Tre quickly became our favorite alpaca. He was so handsome, and so easy-going that my young children could walk him around and enjoy him. With his great personality and textbook perfect fleece, we expected to have Tre for years and years to come.

Then he injured his leg…We imagine that he was playing with the other boys when he tore his ACL. The injury seemed to bother him while breeding so we opted to have it surgically repaired. In hindsight, this may have been a mistake. Tre’s laid back personality lacked the fighting spirit he needed to overcome the complications that followed his surgery. Tre never recovered from the surgery, dying a few weeks later back at the farm.

Losing Tre at age 4 was heartbreaking. It was truly tough on everyone at the farm. His funeral was attended by our family and farm manager, Jeremy. The children made a cross on his grave with the petals from a nearby gardenia bush. We had worked hard to save him. We had loved him so dearly.  And we hadn’t bred him nearly enough.

When Tre died we had only 2 of his cria in utero. When the first one came due, we had a horrible situation where a veterinarian (not my usual one) and I disagreed on whether or not the female was in labor. In the end, it turned out the female had been in labor but she wasn’t progressing because the cria was breech. The cria died during the vet’s attempt to deliver the cria from a breech position a day later. (Note: Do not try to deliver an alpaca in the breech position. Experts recommend a c-section for a full breech.) The stillborn cria was a girl who looked just like Tre. The vet and Jeremy tried to revive her for 30 minutes. It felt like an episode of ER. Many tears were shed. The disappointment surrounded us and weighed us down. We cut a lock of her fleece, and buried her atop her father’s grave.

When it came time for the last Tre cria to be born, I was more than excited and nervous. I dared to hope. My heart had been broken twice that year. I was ready for anything, but I was also hoping so hard for a beautiful fawn female who could carry on Tre’s bloodline. The dam carrying this last cria was Earth Angel, one of the best females we have ever had the pleasure of owning.

Finally, the baby was born. It was fawn and it looked just like Tre! And it was a girl! I remember openly crying with joy, tears streaming down my cheeks.  It felt as though I would never stop smiling. As my children looked on, my son, age 5, explained to his 3-year-old twin sisters, “Sometimes, grown-ups…when they’re happy…they cry.”

Finally, my Tre baby! She was stunning. I named her Beloved. Her eyes were a bit cloudy. Sometimes a rough birth trip can cause corneal ulcers and eye ointment usually cures it. I called the vet to come over and check her out and to give us some drops for her eyes. He said he wouldn’t be able to come out until later. Other than that minor thing, she was perfect.

That night I went out to dinner with my husband. Sitting at a steakhouse enjoying a celebratory dinner,  Dr. Stewart called me from my barn. “Katy,” he said. “This animal is totally blind.”

“Do what?”

He proceeded to explain to me in both veterinary and layman terms that Beloved could not see a thing. She was born without the structures one needs to be able to see. He wondered aloud if we might want to consider putting her down. “No!” I said. “I think I’ve heard of blind alpacas. Let me look into it.”

Beloved

And look into it I did. Sweet little Beloved was bottle fed for the first 2 days. From then on she latched onto her dam. The two of them were thick as thieves. We separated them from the herd in a small pen for 3 months so that Beloved would always be able to find mom and be able to nurse. They were near other alpacas and she could hear, smell, and touch them through the fence.

I did some research and looked for some tipson how to manage her. There wasn’t much available. Beloved has always walked around with a Stevie Wonder-looking head bobbing and weaving thing. As a cria she would run in circles playing with…herself. It was cute and pitiful at the same time. Poignant, really.

Beloved constantly surprised me. I read that I would have to teach her how to drink water out of a bucket rather than from her mom. Just as I was getting ready to do so, I saw her drinking from a bucket. The same thing happended with teaching her to eat pellets. Um, she just did it. Taught herself. I had also read that you couldn’t halter train blind lamas (lamas with one “l” refers to both llamas and alpacas – a little trivia for you). I halter trained Beloved in less than an hour, though I prefer to hook her head in the crook of my arm (very loosely) and I can move her anywhere. She and I both prefer this snuggly, seeing-eye person, way of moving over longer distances.

Beloved loved her mom. We put a bell on Earth Angel for a while but it didn’t jingle much when she walked and the two of them always seemed to know each other’s whereabouts even without the bell. When it came time to wean Beloved, I felt like the most evil person in the world for breaking up their happy twosome. Earth Angel agreed with that assessment as she spit all over me and had to be practically dragged away from Beloved. She looked at me, pleading, “Don’t you know she’s special? You can’t take me away from her. She needs me!!!” I felt guilty and my stomach was in knots over the weaning.

Interestingly, Beloved didn’t seem to notice her mom was gone. At least, not at first. It took her a day or more to notice. She looked for her for a few days, and then she moved on. By that time she was in a field with alpacas her own age that she knew and she seemed to be well adjusted. This was when I started to realize that she had inherited Tre’s gentle laid-back spirit. For Beloved, her temperament is an exquisite blessing. When she bumps into something she doesn’t get upset. She just rolls with it.

Leading Beloved

Every day, Beloved inspires me. The way she knows a gate is open and swings wide of it… the way she befriends the younger, more insecure alpacas … the way she trusts me and is not afraid for me to lead her into the unknown…all of these things bring me immeasurable joy and satisfaction.

Sometimes visitors to our farm are shocked made uneasy by Beloved. They feel sorry for her. I don’t blame them. It would be nice if she could see. But that is not her lot in life. I believe she has a happy life, and I see her triumph every day.

With one of the best fleeces on the farm and no clear answer as to whether or not her blindness is heritable, we decided to breed Beloved.  Most people who have seen this type of blindness say that animals like Beloved have sighted cria. They chalk it up to some sort of environmental problem rather than a genetic one. We will have to wait and see.

Read SiSi’s story in My Home for the Blind – Part I.