A tick bit you where?

Clockwise from top left: 1. Kahuna on Thursday morning when we first saw that something was wrong, with edema present in both the sheath of the penis as well as the lower abdominal area in general. 2. While sedated Jen and our vet discover the presence of a tick at the base of the penis (the remaining bite mark is highlighted by the red arrow). 3. By day 2, Friday, the edema had already started to lessen considerably. 4. By day 4, Sunday, things have almost returned to normal with only slight edema behind the penis.
Clockwise from top left: 1. Kahuna on Thursday morning when we first saw that something was wrong, with edema present in both the sheath of the penis as well as the lower abdominal area in general. 2. While sedated Jen and our vet discover the presence of a tick at the base of the penis (the remaining bite mark is highlighted by the red arrow). 3. By day 2, Friday, the edema had already started to lessen considerably. 4. By day 4, Sunday, things have almost returned to normal with only slight edema behind the penis.

So, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it’s probably not such a great thing when the penile sheath of one of your Herdsires looks more like the engorged teat of a holstein cow, right? Jennifer had gone down to the Stud Barn last Thursday with our vet, Susan Johnson, so that we could get travel papers running on Archangel and Kahuna, who are both headed to our partner’s farm (Stillmeadow Farm) in CT to do a little work, so to speak. I was off picking the boys up from school at the time but Jen said she walked into the barn, caught just a glimpse of Kahuna’s swollen equipment and had one of those “oh boy, that just can’t be good” kind of moments.

Susan sedated Kahuna so that she and Jen could examine him more closely and try to figure out what was going on. With edema present not just in the sheath itself but also in front of and behind the penis, extending back towards the scrotum, the first thoughts were that he had either a nasty urinary tract infection or perhaps a ruptured urethra. It seemed odd though that both of us had been down in that barn the day before and hadn’t gotten even a whiff that anything was amiss. As you can see in the photo at left, this wasn’t the sort of thing that would go unnoticed. Upon further examination though, the organ in question seemed to be fine and in good working order.

Of course when you find an animal with something like this, you would ideally also like to find a smoking gun, something which you can point to as the cause. In this case the smoking gun in question was, as it turned out, a tick, attached at the base of the penis itself. Though this was a first for us, Susan did say that this type of reaction to tick bites is seen in horses. The case for the tick being the cause of Kahuna’s woes was further bolstered by the fact that throughout this entire affair, Kahuna’s body temperature remained completely normal, his blood work didn’t ultimately come back with anything out of the ordinary, and his behavior was completely normal as well.

Though we obviously live in a part of the world where ticks are a constant worry both for humans and animals alike, in 16 years we had never before had a problem with any of our alpacas related to ticks, at least not that we’d been aware of. Safe to say though that when part of your Herdsire’s anatomy swells to 10 times it’s normal size, that that would definitely count as an “problem!” Thankfully, the combination of Banamine and a one week cycle of LA-200 (which just concluded today) brought the edema quickly down and by Sunday morning Kahuna’s family jewels were almost completely back to their normal appearance. Add this case to the running list of new things we have now experienced. You never stop learning…

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