Incubation

Bio-security and proper quarantine procedures are something which we take seriously here, though not on an OCD level. You will not find anyone “sanitizing” the dung pile areas here on a daily basis. I mean, really? I suppose if it makes you feel better then by all means have at it but it’s 5 to 10 minutes of your life that you’ll never get back.

Quarantine at this farm is about protecting the home herd. What this means is that any of our animals that go off to a show or event will come back and spend a minimum of 21 days in our quarantine/transient barn (which also houses our visiting females) prior to going anywhere near our pregnant and birthing females that live at the Arena. Obviously this is not a perfect or fool-proof system. Our Herdsires do still travel between both the quarantine barn and the Arena doing breedings at both. It is, in our estimation, an acceptable level of risk for our herd. You want a perfect system? Go live in a cave with your alpacas and never leave it. Kind of dull I would think.

Though the very real danger of potential exposure to BVDV (Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus) is the reason for the magical 21 day time clock, in reality we are primarily concerned with exposure to high GI parasite loads when we go to and come home from shows. Years ago (pre-BVDV scare) we learned our parasite/quarantine lesson the hard way. I’m guessing it was the 2003 or 2004 NAAS though memory has blurred the lines a bit. In any case, we came home from the show that year and put all of our show animals right back into their original feed groups on the north side of the Arena, instead of into a separate quarantine area. We might as well have been lighting a fuse: 7 to to 10 days later virtually every alpaca on that side of the Arena under the age of 12 months — probably around 40 animals total — developed shooting diarrhea. Cue 5 days of Pepto (for the symptom) and Corid (for the cause). Do you think Eric Clapton’s Hello, Old Friend was written with coccidia in mind?

It’s important to note that we don’t believe in 100% “clean” fecal tests. There is an acceptable and even healthy level of parasite load that alpacas can carry in their systems. The animals which get sick almost spontaneously and develop diarrhea when they get to a show are usually at risk because they have grown up in an environment with no low-level parasite presence. Their owners have most likely nuked their GI tract with coccidiostat and dewormers at the even the smallest presence of parasites on a fecal test, regardless of whether they were symptomatic. All of which over time adds up to having zero tolerance when they inevitably do encounter any of those bad boys at a show. Let’s face it: if you are going to any decent sized show you need to assume that your show animals are essentially making a biological communion with the entire North American alpaca herd on a microbial level. Not only that but they are doing so at a time when their stress levels are generally elevated. Exposure to new parasites, elevated stress, and a slightly suppressed immune system as a result. Geez, I wonder what that could lead to? Half the battle is understanding that your alpacas are likely to encounter and/or develop some elevated parasite loads either at or after any show. So long as one is on the lookout for the symptoms though, and most importantly has those animals isolated upon returning home, there is very little real danger. Identify the problem, treat the problem, and move on.