Cria Latest Update

Our little poorly Zeus is still not too well!  After the treatment from our vet and several days of intensive care from me we did see an improvement towards the end of last week, he had started feeding quite regular from mum, was grazing and even eating hard food along with the rest of the herd.  So it was very promising signs.

He still had his little coat on as he had been loosing some of his fleece!  But over the weekend he has gone back down hill again!

I had stopped supplementing him with the extra goats milk and pro-biotic goats yogurt he was grazing the same amount as the rest of the herd and I saw him regularly feeding from mum, he had also started to fight and run away from me, so I felt it was a sure sign he was on the mend.  Yesterday I noticed he was sitting down a bit more and sadly today he was again sitting the majority of the time, so at lunch time I decided to start supplementing again and gave him some more goats milk/yogurt, this seemed to give him a lift and he did graze a little, at tea time he had some milk and yogurt.

This evening I had a chat with our vet and he said all the herds poo samples showed very little worm problems and little Zeus showed no worms or cocci in his sample at all, so that was a good sign.  So it was possible he may have had some worms and our worming session may have killed them off, the vet explain that sometime, especially with younger alpacas that if they did have worms and were wormed the dying worms can sometimes cause irritation within the gut causing colic pains, thus making the alpaca feel like not eating.  He also said this could go on for up to three weeks.

On reflection this could be what has happen to little Zeus, so the plan will be to continue with milk and yogurt feeds along with some daily finadyne for pain relief, hoping he is relieved of pain and this will encourage him to eat, and the ultimate goal is to keep his digestion system working until he is feeling much better.

We were pleased with our poo samples results and although we had a very low worm count, and no signs of cocci or whipworms, the vet did say there were a lot of people finding whipworms causing a problem this year, probably due the mild winter.  We really need a good few hard frosts to kill of the eggs to reduce the reinfection of the alpacas.

So I will continue to nurse him and with everything crossed, hope he will start picking up and continue to grow and thrive once more.  We can do more and pray we can get him through this.