SWAG Vet Day

Mike went to a dog show with Jake today and he was very pleased with Jake's work, although he did not achieve a clear round he was much better and we are hoping that tomorrow will be his day.

I went to the South West Alpaca Group Vet day where the speaker was Claire Whitehead a well known Camelid Vet.   

I was most interested in the parasitology which was the subject of the afternoon session but also learnt one or two interesting things about Neonatal care of alpaca cria.

Although our farm management is not far off being most effective there are obviously one or two things which we could improve on, especially the method of internal parasite control.   We do work on the results of faecal counts but have been using pooled samples which our Vet approves.  Today, however, I decided to change to Claire's recommendations which include individual samples of 10% of the herd and rather than relying our local vet to examination the samples they will be sent away to a specialist laboratory.

We have two alpacas with persistent mange/mite problems and we have literally spent hundreds on various treatments.    Today it was confirmed that Frontline is the most effective treatment for the type of mite which I think we have.  We have used Frontline successfully on new cases of mite but the two in question have toughened skin and so we under the new information gleaned today we are going to soak their skin (somehow) in warm water 3 times a week and gradually remove the hardened skin, then bathe it and apply the Frontline which should then work.

We have not yet worked out the logistics of the treatment but will give it a try.