Better safe…

So the warm spell of about 10 days ago is mostly just a memory now as we don hats, gloves, and long underwear (if we’re smart) anytime we go out to work in the barns. I made the mistake of stepping outside yesterday for a farm visit without gloves on and found myself chattering my way through the first 20 minutes or so before returning to the house to rectify the situation. I really am from here, I swear! At least the warm spell would be a memory if not for two primary reasons. Firstly the 24+ hours of torrential rain that hit us at the end of that period meant that we went from having a token snow pack to being just brown. Much as I love my home state, it turns out that Vermont with neither green leaves and grass nor snow on the ground just really isn’t all that attractive of a place. Big surprise, huh?

Secondly, the warm days lasted just long enough that we (Jen & Kim…not taking any credit here) took the safe route and elected to administer Ivomec to all of the alpacas at the two lower barns yesterday during herd health. Though our females and any nursing crias up at the Arena are limited to a true dry lot this time of year around the building itself, the weaners, yearlings, and Herdsires at the other barns have access to pasture year round, all things being equal. While we will grant that a week to 10 days of mild weather out on those paddocks presented a very minimal risk where Meningeal Worm was concerned — especially as those days were surrounded on either side by weeks of below freezing temperatures — it was not a toss of the dice we felt like taking. We know that were even one animal to contract MW, that it would inevitably be a front line show animal or worse, a visiting female, not one of our little pet quality weanlings. On the off chance that you haven’t been doing this for very long or perhaps still have your innocence intact where animal husbandry is concerned, allow me to enlighten you: that’s just how the fates work. The good news of course is that several syringes of Ivermectin and a couple of hours later and we were all covered, at least theoretically. Another plus was that February being a non-toenail month (also the reason I wasn’t drafted into the herd health crew), the rest of herd health day was all done by mid afternoon, with just body scores on everyone, ADE paste for the juveniles, and the odd vaccine where someone was due. We now kindly beseech the weather gods to keep things cold enough throughout the rest of the winter in hopes of keeping the Ivomec stored in the supply closet…where it belongs!