Our Nightmare of a Week

On Monday one of our alpacas died. It's been a HORRIBLE week. :(

Here are the details...

Rico and Destiny came to our farm on February 16th. Delight was still breeding so she stayed at the other farm. She will come next week sometime after the positive (we hope) ultrasound.

Destiny is our bottle fed cria. She is 3 months old now and the cutest thing.

Rico was our future Herdsire. He is the REASON we bought this farm when we did. You see we wanted to start a farm but the economy was going down so Michael said that maybe we should wait. Well I fell TOTALLY in love with Rico when we first went to see their farm. I HAD to have THAT alpaca. He was my boy!! So, Michael said we could go ahead and do it. He liked him too.

After we bought him, while he was boarding at their farm, almost EVERY (it may have been every) person who came to look at their alpacas was interested in purchasing him. He was a NICE animal and we got a killer deal on him.

Anyway, I based my other alpaca purchase (Cocoa Powder who is at another farm out of state and will come here in late July) on who to breed with Rico.

He was the heart of my farm, to me.

It rained here on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Sunday afternoon it changed to snow for about an hour and then back to rain. When I went out to do Destiny's 8:00pm bottle I noticed that the roof of the shelter was leaking water...like a sieve.
Rico was laying in the water and not moving. This is not too big of a deal. He had a very long staple length to his fleece. He might not have felt it. Anyway, I got him to move a few feet out of the water but he wasn't wanting to. I forced him and dried him off a bit.

The next morning I went out to do the morning feeding and Rico hadn't moved all night. Destiny was upset and the dogs were barking at the fence where he was.

I was trying to call the vet but his office was closed because of all the snow they had gotten.

I was getting desperate. You see, a rule of thumb in the alpaca industry is that if you have an alpaca down... you should have called the vet yesterday. Downed alpacas rarely live.

Michael got ahold of another vet who said they would see him. I finally was able to get our vet's emergency number. Our vet said that it sounded like hypothermia. I carried him from the pasture into the house (86 pounds in case you are wondering). We started blow-drying him, covering him with warm blankets, and running heaters around him. I couldn't get his temp up. He was obviously declining.

We loaded him into the van and took off for the other vet. When his blood was tested they found that he had humuncous worms (Barber pole worms). He had a 30% chance to live. HE needed a blood transfusion STAT. The other farm offered one of their animals but when we were loading him into our van and showing the kids how to give him manual oxygen...our kids were too scared. They just couldn't do it. He had a seizure while we were in the parking lot. They hurried him back in and we lost him about 5 minutes later. I sat in the lobby and bawled like a baby.

We had to have the body autopsied. So, we left the body with them and I went to a McDs so that the kids could eat their first meal of the day (at 2:00pm). We went home and tried to get Destiny to poop because we needed to test her. She wouldn't. Of course not. She also was freaking out. She wanted Rico back. Alpacas CANNOT EVER live by themselves. They are herd animals and will freak out!

We went back to pick up the body and then Judah and I drove Destiny back over to the other farm to board till next week. By that time it was 8:00pm. I was EXHAUSTED! The other farm owners were also exhausted. They had their males on their farm tested as well. One of theirs came out positive. The others were fine. That alpaca's name is Hampton. Please pray for him to pull through.

Destiny was totally stressed being moved at night but she is doing well at their farm.

The nightmare just keeps continuing...

Today we finally got the results from Destiny's fecal test that was done yesterday. (different vet- we have nothing positive to say about them) Hers was positive for TWO kinds of worms. She is being treated for both. Unfortunately, the dogs also need to be tested so we are waiting for them to poop so I can take samples from all three over to the vet tomorrow.

The vet that worked on Rico and Hampton thinks that these two alpacas just developed a tolerance to the worming vaccines. This is apparently a new prob in the industry.

As you can imagine we are a bit overwhelmed and sad.

Please keep our family and our farm in your prayers and if you made it through this entire novella of a post- Thanks for caring.

Love,