Back to normal

Well I did not realise how long it had been since I updated the blog.

We had a lovely holiday in Fuerteventura. The weather was great and the winter sun was a great boost. Luckily we live only about an hour away from Bristol Airport so the whole journey was very easy.

My son and his family looked after the farm and my mother who lives with us.

We have got back into our normal routine - including dodging the rain.

Bad news today - one of our weanlings died unexpectedly. We are awaiting the results of a post mortem.

I have been halter training all the weanlings and he seemed fine up until yesterday morning when we noticed he was standing on his own and swaying around with a glazed look in his eye.
When we approached him he did not run away as we would expect (alpacas have a very well developed flight reflex). Then he collapsed. The vet came and could find no obvious reason for his condition but gave him several injections to cover all eventualities. We brought him into the barn and covered him with a blanket and put the heat lamp on as he was becoming very cold. he seemed to rally, and I phoned the vet who had treated him - JJ -to report the good news, but an hour or so later it was obvious that he was in pain, so I called the vet back for another emergency visit. JJ was not available but Tessa our favourite vet came. She gave him little hope, although she smelt his breath and felt the smell pointed to kidney problem of some kind. We had a debate and decided she would take him back to the Vet Hospital and put him on a drip and try more treatment over night. He seemed to be holding his own, but unfortunately did not make it through the night.

The post mortem was inconclusive and we are now awaiting the results of lab tests. We need to do this to make certain that there is no problem which might effect the rest of the herd. They are all vaccinated routinely and we put a lot of effort into keeping our paddocks clean. We also circulate them from paddock to paddock so that some are always being rested.

I'll update the blog when we have the results, and hope to have some more happy news next time I write.